Cologne-Wuppertal-Lennestadt is the geographic triangle of Bongen's. And rock indie pop singer/songwriter the musical. With their third studio album "Fragebuch" they deliver a lovingly arranged and gritty, glib power pack. Three years of writing, arranging, recording, changing, discarding and re-recording. But in the end, the trickiest of all questions was the title of the album. It was so obvious:
"I've had a notebook like this ever since this band has existed. Text ideas come in, loose thoughts, words that I like. And ask. Always questions. And at some point I wrote "My Question Book" in capital letters on the front cover," recalls Mario Bongen, the band's singer and songwriter. The neologism then made it into the lyrics of "360°" and finally onto the cover of the new sound carrier.
So we come to the questions. Such an album production, for example, raises a lot of questions: about the sound. The right attitude. The one after the song compilation. How to send the listener on a journey. How you can still manage to wrest 45 minutes of attention from someone in the 2010s. And then there is the question of funding. The four musicians found a contemporary answer: crowdfunding. With the "Bogen's Vier und ihr" campaign, the wherewithal was collected to independently and uncompromisingly create exactly the album that the four had in mind.
The result is a record with lots of light and lots of shadows.
Warm and noisy. Emotional and angry. Without fear of contact with old-fashioned genres (country, folk) or new-fangled instruments (beer bottles). The main thing is that it serves the song, its story. And so every story gets the setting it deserves: the rumbling walking bass on “These legs will never hobble again”, the haunting organ hookline on “This is it” or the eerily beautiful brass ensemble in "Dig a Grave". The lyrics are free of platitudes and fake posturing. Instead, personal anecdotes, kitsch-free love songs and roughly planed everyday poetry.
"Why I'm here? And what percentage of me?”
Lines like these simply and precisely point to the big picture and to the truth that always lies somewhere in between – questions don't lie. This opens up a clear view of the inner workings of the songwriter - at least as far as one can expect from someone who would rather ask questions than give answers. The “question book” then provides at least one answer: the mantra of the final song is “Follow the signs”. And for Bongen's, all the signs are currently green.
1. The last song
2. Boxers
3. Those legs will never limp again
4. This is it
5. Where I want to go
6. 360°
7. Dig a grave
8. The saddest bar around
9. short rtsl
10. Black Eye
11. Closed society
12. The one in the yellow raincoat
13th character
