Falco
Wiener Blut

THE REVIEW

Narrator, showman, salacious storyteller, ironic and characterized by a personal style, captivating and immediately recognizable: Hansi Holzel, known as Falco, was the prominent face (along with Nina Hagen) of the German way of synth-pop, the so-called Neue Deutsche Welle. A lively and explosive artistic movement, characterized by charismatic and unconventional characters, to which Falco contributed with his improbable cocktail of funk, rap, and sarcastic, ingenious lyrics. With his apparent rockstar persona and his typically pompous and bombastic sound, quintessentially 80's, this curious character, a Viennese and personal friend of another great Austrian, Niki Lauda, managed to ridicule that decade characterized by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bettino Craxi, and Madonna, by social disengagement, ostentatious welfare, and the slow but relentless downfall of real socialism in the face of Western capitalism with lyrics full of hedonism, drugs, decadence, and fatalism: an anti-diva dressed as a diva, capable of expressing “underground” concepts using an unabashedly mainstream language.

 Although his meteoric record success, dating back to 1982 with the famous “Der Kommissar,” may suggest otherwise to the more superficial, Falco had to work hard to carve out his place in the sun: coming from the punk scene of a musically marginal nation like Austria, his artistic credibility is in no way questionable, and his notable success was nevertheless less than proportional to the talent and personality expressed throughout his career: “Einzelhaft,” “Junge Roemer,” “3,” “Emotional”: a crescendo worthy of Rossini, then the sudden decline coinciding with the album under review, “Wiener Blut”, which in my opinion is a perfect paradigm of his style, and one of his most pleasant and interesting works.

 An eclectic, flowing album, presenting some significant innovations compared to its predecessors: sung more in English than in German, the Viennese artist’s stylistic range unfolds in various forms, the ever-valid synth-hop of “Wiener Blut”, Falco’s typical stylistic canon, the hedonistic, robotic, and intriguing “Falco Rides Again”, a track of great charm and sophistication that caricatures the personality cult typical of those times while simultaneously anticipating that of nascent hip-hop culture. A delightful hint of glam-rock with the gritty guitars of “Untouchable” preludes what could have been the album’s leading single, a song potentially able to follow in the footsteps of “Der Kommissar” and “Rock Me Amadeus”, namely an overflowing and irresistible “Garbo”, boasting excellently chosen bombastic and orchestral sounds referring to the best ’70s disco tradition which, combined with Falco’s unmistakable flow, create a splendid programmatic and personal manifesto of the artist, also seemingly anticipating his future, and his controversial departure from showbiz; here we find one of the most significant maxims of Falco’s production, “No man can guess in cold blood what he might do in passion, but the things that he deplores today are tomorrow’s latest fashion.”

 Enriched by the presence of pleasing background tracks like “Tricks” and the ballad “Satellite To Satellite”, “Wiener Blut” expresses its most innovative and characteristic content on the original B side of the LP with reflective and exotic atmospheres, with Oriental reflections, translating into small jewels such as “Walls Of Silence”, so hopeful and still very current in its content, the trance-like oblique rap of “Solid Booze”, and the philosophical suggestions of a wonderful slightly Bowie-esque “Sand Am Himalaya”, closing in grand style with a very personal reinterpretation of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”, as had already happened in “3” with “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,” but here Falco does even better by imbuing the song with a biting disco verve that ensures the album ends in grand style.

 In conclusion, “Wiener Blut,” the fifth chapter in Falco’s discography, is an album that perfectly reflects all the winning characteristics of its creator and distances him from the spotlight, assigning him to a more “niche” dimension, thus creating the premises for the second phase of his career, unfortunately prematurely interrupted, which will be formalized by a controversial and inconsistent, but emblematic and courageous album such as “Data De Groove”. A watershed, in short, to be rediscovered as well as the entire production of its charismatic creator.