New album "with a flying white flag"
pump 31-2009
Pumpkin Records / Trost
“…Bell Etage’s surrender on ‘with a flying white flag’ is a triumphant one and gives way to a new intensity and stunning vulnerability… touching!” (The Guardian)
“Die Band hat die Weichen weg von der Rockschiene des Debutalbums gelegt, und der frühere Druck blitzt nur mehr an einigen Stellen auf. Schade!“ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
„The horse as a symbol of dignity, power, innocence or grace – whatever – falls onto a world of restlessness and danger… Bell Etage’s album is infected by a subtle hysteria and it might be strong and unique enough to spread out.” (Village Voice)
“…beaucoup des beaux moments… grand en sentiment…tous les batiments sont besoin d’un Bell Etage” (Le Figaro)
„ …one of the best albums they have ever recorded.“ (Financial Times)
“…gute Songs, feine Arrangements, interessante Stimme, aber da gibt es 1000 andere Bands – oder sind es doch nur 100?“ (Basler Zeitung)
„Bell Etage hat sich eine Woche auf den Burgenländischen Kleylehof im äußersten Osten Österreichs zurückgezogen, und auch die behandelten Themen scheinen eine Affinität Richtung Grenze und darüber hinaus zu haben. Die weiße Flagge als Symbol einer Staatenlosigkeit, Nicht-Zugehörigkeit und Individualisierung, die schon immer mit Vorliebe ihren Ausdruck in der Musik gesucht hat …“ (Die Zeit)
„…hätten sie doch aufgegeben, bevor sie „with a flying white flag“ herausgebracht hätten!“ (Rolling Stone, Deutsche Ausgabe)
„They no longer sound like the Kings of Leon – unfortunately.“ (The Daily Mirrow)
„…dolce e doloroso, il Verdi di rock!“ (La Stampa)
„Singing about mermaids is no longer up to Cher. Thank God!” (New York Times)
Bell Etage
with a flying white flag
Pumpkin Records 2009
It's all about sex. Or loneliness, depending on the different characters. On one side there are Elvis Presley and James Brown, imagine them stomping on the stage floor with one arm pointing into the audience singing about what they're gonna do when a girl might be lonesome that very night. A world of kisses and desire, sometimes a world of loss and regret.
.on the other side, call it the opposite or not, amongst a million other bands and small stars, there are Bell Etage.
The Mojo never really reaches the surface. It floats arround in the cellars and hidden floors. The music might be rhythmical and have a 1000 Volts of power, but something is broken about it. The message is wrapped up in a veil, you see it's there but you can't be sure.
"My house is crowded with a couple of strangers, when you need them as friends you don't care 'bout the danger, that you turn out to be the visitor." That is the first line of the Trumpet Song. So when you finally leave the house, for whatever reasons, you look at it differently, and you look at all the other things differently. Maybe you took a glance through the window from time to time, but when there's light inside you mostly see the reflections.
However, the songs are made of the observations from out there. You might return one day to your house but the wilderness you will remember. So the songs are the messengers that are sent to whereever with unclear orders, and when they are knocking at your door they look confused, like having lost pieces of their memory or something like this. They want to tell you what they have to say but in the same moment they don't want to. There is an aura of alarm to it, but the louder and the more flashing it gets the more the silence comes out. Like the darkness that begins to get clearer when an ambulance is driving on a country road at night.
It is the silence opening up between all the drums, bass, cello, elecric guitars and voices. It's all about sex, loneliness and silence. But mostly it's about the hope inside of that very ambulance truck.
bell etage - we carried the sunlight down to the day (Pumpkin/Trost, 2007)
