Klaus Johann Grobe: io tu il loro

You Gave it All, the wonderful curtain call on Klaus Johann Grobe’s new long-player, io tu il loro, illuminates the power of the minor chord: something that melts the heart every time, and throughout their first album in in six years, it plays out as the Zürich duo’s most potent weapon.

Klaus Johann Grobe are Sevi Landolt (bass, guitars, keys, vocals) and Daniel Bachmann (drums, vocals), and while not necessarily in one’s everyday orbit, they are band essential to be welcomed into it. On io tu il loro, there’s no defiance, just unadulterated balladry with heartbreak on tap.

With the songs evolving following a two week retreat to a remote Swiss valley, io tu il loro was recorded and mixed at Dala Studios Winterthur by David Langhard with mastering duties falling to Mikey Young (UV Race, Bonnacons of Doom and guitarist for Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Total Control). The results are warm, tender yet slightly fragile.

Sonically, io tu il loro sees the band shifting confidently from the dance floors they’ve spent the last decade flirting with. From the funky echoes and a subtle disco aesthetic that dominated 2018’s Du bist so symmetrisch, here Landolt and Bachmann produce something that feels closer aligned to their personalities.

It starts with the soft, woozy serenade of Highway High. A song that hovers like a thick mist hugging the mountain tops. And it doesn’t abate with the airy sway of Getting Down to Adria, which sees the Landolt down in the doldrums, spinning a yarn that has no currency (“Everything I do has lost its meaning / Being a total fool is no longer demeaning”).

Never Going Easy is the kind of song that would have underpinned A.M morning radio back in the day, right after David Bowie willing the working class to the front door on the back of Heroes. Meanwhile, on When You Leave and lo Sempre di tu, any hint of Klaus Johann Grobe’s disco aesthetic of the past remains there. Here they shed a new skin with the sort of broken-hearted balladry delivered with swoon and swagger. It continues with the nimble synth rock one-two of Try and Bay of Love. The kind of heart-wrenching, easy-on-the-ear soft rock that speaks to the masses.

With the buoyant melodies that dominate Better Do, Klaus Johann Grobe show more of their accessible side, which also paints a vivid picture of io tu il loro: this is subtle, lounge-inspired songcraft designed for cocktails bars and, in fact, Klaus Johann Grobe may be rendered as the quintessential house band for such locales.

“Someone else might have the answer/ You better do believe / Someone else might have the answer / Not me,” sings Landol on Better Do. It’s a modest admission, and the more time spent with io tu il loro, the more you realise that this is music made by lonely souls for lonely souls. Lyrically and sonically, io tu il loro is the sort of bridge album that most of will feel aligned to at some point. From hipsters to the average joes, Klaus Johann Grobe have delivered off-kilter, democratic lounge music that brings all walks of life together.

io tu il loro is out Friday via Trouble In Mind Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.