Das Bierbeben

Nervy new wave electroclash punk-pop Neue Deutsche Welle never sounded quite so good, at least for the first decade of the 21st century. On their third, self-titled album, Das Bierbeben hit the ground running with "Dunkle Tage," part playground chant and part gentle command to action, while the nervous as hell guitars are to die for. The tension between songs of more relative accessibility and of sternly pulsing dance command with odd touches: the wheezing turns on "Wie Und Vogel," or the ye-ye pop spark of "Wehr Dich Doch" slamming up against the very skinny tie guitar frenetics. "Delirium," with its cool opening, sweetly mournful post-punk guitar against increasingly sweeping electronics and lovely singing, is the "Maps" of the album and to nice effect, while "Abschied" is one of the smoother Stereolab rips out there, especially on the chorus. There's almost too much going on to fully say Das Bierbeben have fully settled on a sound that's truly and totally theirs, but there's no question that this is a top quality confection for a world more engaged in genre mixing and matching than ever before.