Music: Little Bear and the Milk Boys: Time for punk rock again

In recent years, a renaissance of NDW-influenced punk and wave music has been observed. Acts like Excitement Public Excitement, Levin Goes Lightly, Sorry3000 and Karies nonchalantly use the preparatory work of their role models and blur the boundaries between past, present and future in a sometimes irritating way. The New German Wave has thus become the New New German Wave.

The revival that can be observed is perhaps also a reason why the cultural ancestors of that time are making records again. Last year, for example, the Düsseldorf band Östro430 released their first new album in 40 years with “Punk Rock the Housewife Style”. Anette Benjamin – frontwoman of the legendary Hans-A-Plast in the 80s – has also returned to the stage with her new band Die Benjamins, as has Anja Huwe, singer of Xmal Deutschland in the 80s, who recently appeared with »Codes« gave a new sign of life.

And Bärchen and the Milchbubis from Hanover, who scored several scene hits in the early 80s with songs like “I don’t want to get older” or “Tiefseefisch” on the No-Fun label, are also back with their new album “The Return of the Bumm! « reappeared on the scene. What is striking is that the proportion of women among the comeback bands is extremely high. Bärchen frontwoman Anette Simons recently told “Kaput Mag” that she and many of her fellow band members from back then had children at some point – “there was no time for punk rock anymore.”

But now the children are out of the house, so poking can happen again. The opener “Bed Bug Alarm” suggests that the bears are really keen on it. “Get off you little shits / Please don’t suck blood,” sings Simon over strumming guitars and pounding drums, firmly resisting the idea that you have to moderate your tone as you get older. On the contrary: In “Happy Bonbon” she sings about the new freedoms in old age: “I don’t need a pill/No pill before and no pill after/Because I’m old,” it says. Now you can smoke, drink and even consume happy candies.

In general, age is noticeably present on the album. The final track “Blondie”, the only ballad on the album, is downright touching, in which a demented protagonist is sung about, who briefly regains old fragments of memories from days long past by listening to old punk songs. At the same time, this can also be interpreted as a self-ironic reference to the band’s old hit “Young broken saves old people’s homes” from 1980, in which they once naively and amiably celebrated self-destruction as the highest form of hedonism.

It’s the only melancholy song on the new record. Instead, in songs like “Kein Problem”, “Mansplainer” or “Tträgergott und Tinderhengst” Simons’ brash, brash tone, which we knew and loved almost 45 years ago, dominates. In itself, this is entertaining, catchy and extremely likeable in the good moments – but over the length of the album it can also become tiring due to the lack of variety.

Bear and the Milk Boys: »The Return of Boom!« (Wallpaper/Indigo)