Ute Lemper |
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Tue. April 04.2000 8:48 AM EDT |
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New Lemper Album Features Costello, Waits SongsGerman chanteuse moves from Weimar cabaret to pop crooning. by Contributing Editor Stacey Kors |
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Many of the songs on Punishing Kiss were written for Ute Lemper. ( ) |
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Audiences will experience a different side of song stylist Ute Lemper with the Tuesday (April 4) release of her new Universal/Decca album, Punishing Kiss and her U.S. tour that opens Friday in Los
The album, which features new material by Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Scott Walker and the Divine Comedy, is a bit of a departure for Lemper, who is best known for her signature interpretations of the songs of German composer Kurt Weill. "After nearly 15 albums of authentic theatrical material, I said to my record company that I would really love to do something contemporary," Lemper said Saturday from her New York home. "And I've always felt contemporary in my style of performance anyway." Through the help of friend David Sefton of London's South Bank Centre arts complex, Lemper was able to get in contact with some of today's most interesting rock and off-beat pop songwriters and have them contribute to the album. While some, such as Costello, sent her completed songs that had yet to be recorded, the majority of the artists involved wrote new pieces expressly for her. A Different Kind Of Familiarity Although Punishing Kiss — which was co-produced by Lemper and features musical arrangements by Joby Talbot and the Divine Comedy — has a cutting-edge feel about it, Lemper was quick to point out the connections between this music and her previous work. "All of the songs are in their own ways theatrical," she said, "and it's about storytelling and stories which somehow seem to be based in the same stories that were explored in the early '20s in the Weimar Republic. There are characters and dimensions in these songs which seem familiar to me." For Lemper, the relationship between these songs and her other repertoire was, in fact, so strong that she decided to put a Weill track on the otherwise contemporary CD. The "Tango Ballad," from the renowned Weill/Bertolt Brecht show, The Threepenny Opera, is sung in a raw, intense duet by Lemper and The Divine Comedy singer Neil Hannon. "Because it is the centenary of Weill's birth, and there are so many concerts and performances in honor of Kurt Weill's music, I wanted to include a Weill song," Lemper said. "But by putting it in this contemporary context, I also wanted to demonstrate its timelessness, and how well this material melds together with the rest of it. They really do come from similar corners of the universe." Various Takes On Cabaret Yet despite the similarities, Lemper said that she didn't consider the songs on Punishing Kiss to be "contemporary cabaret." "Modern cabaret doesn't really exist," Lemper said. "In America, the term 'cabaret' has a completely different context than it has in the European sense. In Europe, and especially in the Berlin context, it is political satire, and in America it's more like an evening entertainment — very private, actually, and in a certain way biographical by the performer. But it's kind of like a personality show." "But I do think that these are contemporary theater songs or art songs," she said. "Some of them are closer to the barriers of pop and rock, and some really have quite classical dimensions." While some of the contributors to Punishing Kiss, such as British band the Divine Comedy and American-turned-British '60s avant-pop legend Scott Walker, might be more familiar to a European audience than an American one, Lemper said the album still had a decidedly international appeal. "After all, Tom Waits is American, Nick Cave is Australian, Elvis Costello is English, and I'm German," she said. Marketing Dissimilarities But Lemper also said that the European and American musical markets were often quite different from each other. "In Europe, you don't make music necessarily to go right to the top of the charts," she said. "You can take more risks in that context. But I think that market exists in America too — it's just so much smaller than the multimillion dollar pop chart market." A perfect example of how these markets differ can be found in the advertising and marketing strategies for Punishing Kiss. Not only does the album feature alternate lead tracks in America and Europe (the Divine Comedy's grand pop tune, "The Case Continues" on the U.S. version and Nick Cave's more subtle "Little Water Song" on the European), but the album sports dramatically different covers as well, with a bold, sexy shot of Lemper advertising the former, and a moody, intimate portrait gracing the latter. "The European version is the version that I chose," Lemper said. "In Europe they let me do what I want. But these American heads in the record company have their own opinion, and I have given up asking about it." Randy Dry, director of marketing and artistic development for universal classics' crossover music division, thinks that it's still the music that ultimately interests an audience and sells the CD. "With Punishing Kiss (RealAudio excerpt of title track)," Dry said, "Ute Lemper continues to push the artistic envelope and showcase her chameleonlike talent. She has expertly crafted an exciting and dynamic album that will help introduce her to a wider, more mainstream audience without alienating her core fans." "I hope it appeals to a very broad public," Lemper said, "all those who are not fixed on the top chart music but who like rather sophisticated songs with many kinds of jazz, classical, and rock elements. It's not for the hip-hop audience, obviously; and I don't know how classical purists will react." Then she laughed. "But what do I know? I wish everybody would buy it." |
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