Lambert

In the organizer's words:

LAMBERT is back. Maybe he was never gone. Or maybe he was never there. It's pointless to ask.

After all, you'd have to track him down first to find out. And you could never be sure whether it really is him behind the Sardinian bull mask. Either way: LAMBERT is back. He's releasing a new album. He has called it I AM NOT LAMBERT.

So let's start with that. I AM NOT LAMBERT is classic Lambert and further proof of the creative versatility of the pianist, composer and producer, who has been highly acclaimed for more than a decade and presumably lives in Berlin. But I AM NOT LAMBERT is also very different, as it is his first album with vocal parts, with real songs, if you like. "My music has always been song-oriented," he says. "It felt extremely natural for me to see if my music would work in the more classic form of a song. Songs are a big part of what I listen to, so this kind of music is just ... I don't know ... honestly?"

Indeed, I AM NOT LAMBERT begins with him singing in a vocoder voice amidst the tranquil sounds of the opening track Spirit . It's not the only voice on the album. Australian Kat Frankie lends her soft vocals to the delicate So Unkind, for example, and his old friend Dekker underpins The Sum with his soulful timbre until it becomes a Prince-like homage. Also on board is Rob Goodwin (The Slow Show), whose weathered voice on Hurts Like You unconsciously channels the spirit of Lambchops Is A Woman. One thing is certain: none of these three people is Lambert. Just as the core line-up of Daniel Schaub (guitars, bass, drums), Marie-Claire Schlameus (cello) and Ralph Heidel (saxophone, clarinet, flute) are not LAMBERT. Heidel lends delicate nuances to pieces such as the haunting All At Once and can also be heard on the elegant The Garage, while Schlameus' cello plays a prominent role in Parthenope , whose piano melody is in turn inspired by Paolo Sorrentino's film of the same name and whose low notes tick like clockwork.

At times, Lambert also switches from his traditional piano to the drums, as in We'll Be Safe Here, The Sum, The Garage and The Chase, which begins like a meeting between John Carpenter and Debussy before cleverly swerving to the side. Is this the Lambert we know?

I AM NOT LAMBERT, it says on the cover. I am many, answers the music. And so, alongside echoes of the noughties and enthusiasm for acts such as Bright Eyes, Fiona Apple, Jon Brion and many others, we also hear references to Lambert's passion for jazz, which existed long before his career as LAMBERT and is not least an integral part of his podcast with musician Felix Weigt. We'll Be Safe Here showcases a bouncy Rhodes, and Gingerly combines chamber music intimacy with fingers that Oscar Peterson would envy. Another old friend, Kenny Warren - no, he's not Lambert either - complements the dreamy You Don't Like Me with his trumpet, while It Will Happen Either Way comes across as fragile as porcelain.

One thing is certain: Lambert has been playing with questions of identity for nine albums now, although his mask was originally simply the result of a desire to leave his musical past behind. "I didn't want people to know anything about me," he admits in reference to his self-titled debut album from 2014.

"I wanted to clear the air." But the headgear developed a life of its own, becoming an emblem and a lure, and if Lambert became "The Man In The Mask" nolens volens about it, that suited him pretty well.

"I had to talk about it a lot, but I didn't mind," he explains. "It was better than talking about my previous musical attempts - and failures." Such tongue-in-cheek comments became another hallmark of his persona, although neither approach was defensive in nature. "I don't need protection," he says - and he means it in an irony-free way: "My music is great. It doesn't have to be serious to be good, and neither do I. I don't have to claim it as high culture either, they're just songs. Very good songs, of course!"

Maybe you could put it like this: LAMBERT is an artist who takes the myth of authenticity so seriously that he always has to break it ironically. For some others, on the other hand, his humorous frivolity stands for authenticity, and when he tells us that his last solo album Actually Good was the soundtrack for a TV series that never got off the ground - in which he himself was supposed to play the lead role as a grey-haired, masked detective - who are we to doubt this? LAMBERT has nothing to hide. Or does he?

In fact, to this day, few can say who is hiding behind that mask. Even when he took the mask off, for example at the merch stand after the concerts, he remained difficult to recognize and raised further questions: Could he be LAMBERT without the mask? And if not, would his music live on? Or: would it still be his music if he performed without a mask? To find out, he began to take off his "uniform" - even if only during a few performances - but this also proved ambiguous. No one had bought tickets because of the mask.

And yet he noticed how his unmasked state affected his audience.

"When people could see my face while we were talking," he recalls, "we had a different kind of connection." Nevertheless, he remained LAMBERT for the audience, even if he thought he had left LAMBERT behind. It became increasingly confusing, especially when he realized that he himself - as himself - was wearing a mask and playing a role. He was trapped in a hall of mirrors in which the self looked back at him from a thousand directions as a performative misunderstanding - and the utopian longing for authenticity, perhaps especially in a world that has long consisted primarily of social media impersonations, fakes and avatars, became increasingly unattainable.

Fortunately, he came to a conclusion. "What matters is doing what I've always done: playing with ideas and writing at the same time, looking for pop where there's not so much of it. All the other stuff isn't that important."

So here are the headlines: Lambert is back. On the cover of his new album, you can see him taking off his mask. What is revealed is not Lambert being Lambert, nor Lambert not being Lambert. What can be said, however, is that I AM NOT LAMBERT is the most honest lie Lambert has ever told. And his most versatile album.