With ‘News from Planet Zombie’, The Notwist return to view after years of exploration and experiment with an album rich in both melancholy and positivity, sketched across a suite of thrilling, fiercely committed pop songs. It’s an album reflecting a chaotic world, but responding with warmth and generosity, to achieve creative and spiritual consolidation. Recorded in their home base of Munich, it reconnects with the security of the local to explore the troubles of the global: a guiding impulse writ large across this album’s eleven songs. It’s also the first studio album since 1995’s ‘12’ that the entire band recorded together in the studio in its expanded live formation. A new album by The Notwist is always a curious endeavour; their musical language is as consistent and resilient as the contexts for creativity are unpredictable and ever shifting. For ‘News from Planet Zombie’, the core trio of Markus and Micha Acher and Cico Beck embraced the plural possibilities of writing together, bringing songs to the collective and then arranging, rehearsing and recording that material live, in the studio. The result is an album that’s energised, fully in ‘the now’, with spectacular moments where you can hear the magic bubbling up in the dynamic between the Achers, Beck, and fellow members Theresa Loibl, Max Punktezahl, Karl Ivar Refseth, and Andi Haberl. ‘News from Planet Zombie’ acknowledges the distress of our current geopolitical impasse, while reminding us there are collective ways forward.

1. Teeth
2. X-Ray
3. Propeller
4. Red Sun
5. The Turning
6. Snow
7. Silver Lines
8. Who We Used to Be
9. How the Story Ends
10. Projectors
11. Like This River