The Nordic pop humorist Andreas Dorau simply leaves everything out and presents the essential: 15 crazy songs reduced to their catchy lines in cheerful pop dress. "Das Wesentliche" is the name of Andreas Dorau's new album. This is the German pop poet who landed the new German wave hit "Fred vom Jupiter" in those days. Since then he has changed, changed, grown... he has retained a sense of humour and the absurdity of his singing. On "Das Wesentliche" we encounter a colourful mixture of bubblegum, dance, HI-NRG, leftfield electronics, junk shop glam and yacht rock. Above all, however, just the one thing - the essential - namely the choruses. Andreas Dorau dares a simple and ingenious experiment that is long overdue: reduce each song to what everyone wants to hear, the lines to sing along that make us dance, the hookline, the catchy tune; the in-between, the verses, he simply left out. The 15 songs on "Das Wesentliche" are quite short and seem interestingly all the more opulent. We hear strings and balladesque piano to pop melodies, acoustic guitar and the unmistakable singing of Andreas Dorau, in which there is always a touch of ironic amusement. That's funny but not silly, discreetly wacky, timelessly good German pop.
