Trost
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Trust Me - Trost Album Review
Album Review
Sinister German jazzed-tinged retro pop doesn't exactly scream 'hit record', so it is unlikely that Trust Me, the new album from Annika Line Trost will be troubling the charts. Originally released in Germany in 2006, it has taken a while for it to reach our shores. Trost served her musical apprenticeship as one half of electro-punk-pop duo Cobra Killer before releasing a self-titled solo album and a brilliantly named single, Tattoo Your Name On My Ass.
Album opener Cowboy sounds like it fell off the soundtrack of a German remake of Austin Powers. There's a definite hint of 60s pop vixen, not in an Emma Bunton way, worry not. Trost's buttery voice skims along the surface of the song. The song is in German, the only English word is "cowboy", which is repeated so often it starts to feel like a hypnotic mantra. Second track This Strange Someone takes the album in a different direction. The Latino rhythm and repetitious piano line create a dark, David Lynch-esque mood, like the soundtrack to a nightmare sequence in a B-movie.
Man on the Box stands out as the best track on the album, a groovy twangy guitar number to dance around your bedroom to. Similarly, In Diesem Raum has a swinging London vibe, despite the fact that it is sung in German. Other album highlights break through when Trost relinquishes the theatrics to expose vulnerability in her lyrics and whispering vocals, most notably on I Was Wrong.
Trust Me conjures images of murky late-night cellar bars in Berlin with a surreal and eerie twist, like an avant-garde Goldfrapp. Trost is certainly intriguing, but no doubt an acquired taste. With such varied elements of warped 60s pop, jazz undertones, sinister menace and Bond theme histrionics, it is impossible to neatly categorise Trost. At times like this it helps to reach for the philosophy of Forrest Gump - Trost is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.
