End of the year. Again! The dog creeps under the sofa, the first emergencies with torn fingers are brought in, the butler trips over the bearskin. Same procedure as every year! As the year draws to a close, some people ask themselves: what to do with the evening? Rambo Zambo or Sylvester Alone? It still takes two to make a dinner for one, and so it once happened that two notorious New Year's Eve sourpusses got together in search of a way to spend the evening without pouring lead and polonaise Blan-kenese. Since then, instead of firecrackers, they prefer to let it rip in the practice room. This is how, not every year, but every year again, a new NinaMarie release is born. Thomas Gotz, drummer for the Beatsteaks, and Marten Ebsen, known as the guitarist for Turbostaat, have been forming this band since 2004. Musically, the signals of the musical mother ships inevitably resonate with NinaMarie. Nevertheless, musical certainties are combined here with a rare courage for melody and harmonies, which never tip over into the cloying. Rather, they threaten to smear here and there and land in a puddle of the post-punk noise from which they emerged. The lyrics seem to be mirrored on the musical surface, much of it seems like a time traveller's view from his own youthful room, where a record by Dischord was still spinning on the turntable, while in the background the nuclear power station is already beaming towards its own shutdown date. The lyrics are about unease in one's own country and language, about the past, present and future. Alternately sung by Ebsen or Gotz, who also played the other instruments, the post-punkers unite honest lyrics and honest music into a rethought version of pop rock, and incidentally free the genre from its bad reputation. (Diego Castro)