Tumult, Clubkonzert Berlin

With “Tumult”, Herbert Grönemeyer has followed up in every way on the many accomplishments of his forty-year career. Above all, “Tumult” is also a political album – the work of an artist who takes a stance, one who advises calm in the uneasy times in which we live, but also resolve and sticking to our guns: “Understanding is always good”, the song “Just in Case” declares, “but move not a millimeter to the right / It is a battle of the mind”. He presented and tested the new songs for the first time in October at a club concert at Berlin’s Radialsystem V on the banks of the Spree. The venue provided a small, bijou, intimate framework for the new tunes and a few classics. There is no stage, everything happens at eye level. The audience sits in almost close physical contact with the singer and his band. Some of the best parts show Grönemeyer dancing through them as if it were a family celebration, and you can see how pleased he is, but also his sense of expectation and nerves, as he performs those new songs for his family. He is indeed the greatest songwriter we’ve had for the last 40 years, an artist who has his feet firmly on the ground, yet never stands still.