Alligatoah

Alligatoah's success is no coincidence, his art far more than trivial slapstick, his wit an efficient tool for coping with world-weariness and interpersonal hurt. Alligatoah is not only a master of anthemic melodies, of playing with his own voice and rhyming chains that are often so good that they are not even noticeable as rhyming chains - Alligatoah is a master of exaggeration. He has been for fifteen years. And yet he has never succeeded so well in the balancing act between world-political problem situations, sharp-witted humor and humorless-sharp-witted emotional level as on his new album "Rotz & Wasser", whose tracks will be heard, among other things, at his catch-up date on Monday, November 20, 2023, in the cathedral city on the Rhine.

Talent he has yes, this Alligatoah. All the more pathetic that he has yet to drown every progressive approach in an infantile word joke, every hit melody in swollen schmaltzy theatricality and every stage show in children's carnival chocolates. How small must the ego of an artist be, who for fifteen years now has entrenched himself behind silly fecal humor, dusty puns and grotesque medieval costumes, just to distract from his inner life, not to allow any surface for attack? And how the hell did Alligatoah manage to get on the radio, play headlining shows, rise to the pop Olympus thanks to several gold and platinum records, and even go fucking diamond with his biggest hit "Willst Du"?

"Rotz & Wasser" provides answers to these questions, knows how to cleverly refute the always same arguments of the comment column haters and feuilleton critics. This new, now sixth album presents a matured Alligatoah. An Alligatoah who consciously lets the over the years trained arrogance crumble. An Alligatoah who distracts less, overcharges, courts laughter. An Alligatoah who lets the fog around a certain Lukas Strobel clear in fragments. It is no coincidence that Alligatoah has already stripped bare in the truest sense of the word for the covers of the pre-release singles and his album artwork is now dominated by a badly battered package, which he heaves through a rainy scenery. "Snot & Water" is actually the first record on which the 32-year-old reveals very own feelings that seem to be genuine - in places even without any ambiguity. A self-care ballad in which Alligatoah straightforwardly urges his listeners to take care of their own souls? A line like "honestly, I'm gonna miss you hard"? The frank promise in the dramaturgical finale of the record to give everything for his unborn child until his final chapter? No, there would have been nothing like that in earlier phases of his discography.

If "Triebwerke" was Alligatoah's ironic love album and "Musik ist keine Lösung" his "Another Brick in the Wall", "Rotz & Wasser" is now the emotional, the dramatic, the only semi-ironic love album, perhaps the sensitivity album. Definitely it is a symbiosis of the big topics of our time and the examination of interpersonal relationships, being in love, separation pains, new beginnings and emotional fragility. At the same time, "Snot & Water" offers a detailed insight into the inner soul of a complicated character who generally has a hard time with genre pigeonholes, rice-board opinions and zeitgeist effects, and is even too idiosyncratic to want to be the poster boy of any rebellious movement. Let's not get it wrong: the authenticity that lurks in songs like "Dunstkreis", "Fuck Rock'n'Roll", "Stay in Touch" or "Nachbeben" is by no means to be confused with an end to the permanent role changes, the corny jokes or the masked ball typical of Alligatoah. All these gimmicks are still an important part of the DNA of his art - in contrast to the past, Alligatoah just seems to have gone less intensively in search of the good gag and the ultimate asshole figure to satirize creatively.

"Rotz & Wasser" fits well into the present time of major crises just by its tendency to conciliatory approaches. Curiously enough, many of the lyrics were written before the start of the pandemic and mostly on trips - trips that Alligatoah took alone. Since the beginning of his solo career - and this has never changed despite the great successes - he has acted as a "me", never giving up the reins, even when it comes to stage designs, artwork or the choice of costumes. Of course, he also produced "Rotz & Wasser" - once again - single-handedly, played all the instruments himself and designed and edited all the videos himself. Alligatoah has nevertheless expanded his creative mindstate, has implemented parts of the accompanying visual work at the Bauhaus in Dessau and has tapped into new sources of inspiration. The fact that his guitar trap sounds more Liedermacher-esque than ever certainly has to do with the fact that the music of Hannes Wader, Franz Josef Degenhardt and Reinhard Mey has surrounded him since childhood. In contrast to earlier Alligatoah albums, "Rotz & Wasser" is more compact and clearly arranged, increasingly dispensing with uniform song structures, a classic intro or the obligatory bracketed song broken up into three individual parts.

Alligatoah's success is no coincidence, his art far more than trivial slapstick, his wit an efficient tool for coping with world-weariness and interpersonal injury. Alligatoah is not only a master of anthemic melodies, of playing with his own voice and rhyming chains, which are often so good that they are not even noticeable as rhyming chains - Alligatoah is a master of intensification, a master of symbioses in content, a perfectionist all-rounder. He has been for fifteen years. And yet he has never managed the balancing act between world-political problems, sharp-witted humor and humorless, sharp-witted emotions as well as he does on his new album "Rotz & Wasser".