The press release for this album boldly states that the new offering from BEATSTEAKS knocked Adele of the top of the album charts in Germany in its debut week. This merely underlines a fairly well known fact – that Beatsteaks are absolute legends over there. Over here they have been, in comparison, mostly overlooked. But, their following on these fair shores will be pleased to see the first new studio album from this lot in 4 years.
Beatsteaks have always mixed things up and ‘Boom Box’ offers a lot more than the slightly limp title would suggest. There isn’t a lot of the punk and noise stylings of 2002’s ‘Living Targets’ left here – instead you can hear echoes of The Talking Heads (in ‘Cheap Comments’) and you could easily imagine tracks like ‘Milk And Honey’ sitting nicely on XFM’s daytime play list. Clearly they have been listening to some Hold Steady recently.
Perhaps the intensity of old is lacking a bit here – there is no ‘Let Me In’ on this record. But while the punk leanings are down, the catchy choruses are every bit as apparent (‘Automatic’ particularly), buried deep in among the usual, slightly more melancholy, reflective tracks.
It’s still perplexing to quite understand how this lot have become as big as chart pop bands in Germany, but this is about the most appealing attempt from a great band doing a pop album as you could wish for.