Playing the Monster

First time I heard Alli Neumann I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Twenty-one, an actress trying music, and already sounding like someone who’d studied how Falco got away with it, how Nina Hagen could be crude and brilliant at the same time. The first songs—”Merlot, Macht & Muse,” Wenn ich dich Seh, Hohes Fieber—had this nervous energy, like she was testing which of her voices people would let her keep.

The second record was a turn. Monster opens on this massive Old Hollywood moment, all strings and drama, before she slides in sounding exalted and populist at once. Franz Plasa produced it—worked with Falco on Mutter, der Mann mit dem Koks ist da—and the 80s DNA is everywhere. But it isn’t backward. It’s about becoming the thing that wins in a neoliberal world. Not the person afraid of monsters. The one willing to be it.

What kills me is how she never sounds like she’s working. No German art-school gravity, no lyrics trying to sound smart. Just this charm that’s also a little cruel, stopping just short of mean. Hadn’t I already said I’m sorry, but the monster’s here. The grin’s in there. She’s done apologizing. She’s not even faking it anymore. And what are you going to do about it, get mad? That’s not the game.

Because it is a game. An arcade game and she’s holding the controller. That’s all it is. She understands it, the music understands it, and somewhere in the delivery I think she’s laughing at how obvious it is that you still have to play to win.