Maximilian Hecker
Lady Sleep

THE REVIEW

Maximilian Hecker “Lady Sleep” 2005. Standing on a cliff with the sea before you and receiving sprays of water from the crashing waves, feeling the salt on your face while watching the sunset on the horizon.

This is what I experienced (because I have already lived it) listening to this third album by Maximilian Hecker. A warm and clear voice grips your heart, whispering sweet words on perfect melodies with piano soundscapes touched by lively and pressing percussion. Romantic melodies, moving and enchanting ballads. A German singer and songwriter who sings in English, eleven tracks in a crescendo of emotion. An album that compared to his previous two (“Infinite Love Songs” 2001 and “Rose” 2003) becomes much more melodic and almost more lyrical in terms of composition, abandoning that subtle rock vein they might have had. There are no more computerized sounds like in “Infinite Love Songs” of the same album and like in “Daylight” in “Rose” deepening his pop romanticism as already felt in the beautiful and melancholic “Never Ending Days” in “Rose” and in “Today” in “Infinite Love Songs”.

“Lady Sleep” is a gem for lovers of the genre, with a series of songs to let slide over you like the sublime “Daze Of Nothing” or “Anaesthesia” or to hum softly like the cheerful and “almost” carefree “Everything Inside Me Is Ill”. The piano becomes a poignant instrument in songs like “Help Me” or “Dying”, four minutes of pure artistic harmony where the piano floats up and down and where Maximilian's voice breaks in only to tell us that “he is disappearing”. The album closes after the very sad but also angry “Yeah Eventually She Goes” with the title track “Lady Sleep”, a pearl of the album, an outstanding romantic ballad in which the piano notes resemble water droplets that gradually disappear, allowing you to close your eyes and begin to see…