Leoniden - Sophisticated Sad Songs (2024)

Anyone who has seen the Leonids perform on stage even once will remember them for a long time to come: surreally happy faces on and in front of the stage, broad sound backdrops, solidarity circle pits, somersaults, experimental synth contortions and circulating guitars. The exuberant, punk-spirited live moment has been at the heart of the band's DNA since day one. It has made the Leonids better, louder and better known from festival summer to festival summer - and yet it has never turned them into a bland, colorless mainstream band. Fortunately, Lennart and Felix Eicke, Jakob Amr, Marike Winkelmann and Djamin Izadi don't want to be. Instead, they prefer to broaden their own niche, preserve the subcultural spirit of the early days, take the indiepop-postpunk-synthgrunge thing to the next level and transform collective unease into seconds of communal happiness with "Sophisticated Sad Songs".

And that brings us to the Leoniden paradox. The songs by the five-piece from Kiel always seem to be shrouded in a veil of euphoria, are danceable to the max and predestined for the biggest possible stages. In direct contrast to this, the same songs almost always convey negative, world-wearied thoughts on a lyrical level - negative, world-wearied thoughts that are just waiting to be drowned in a collective dance frenzy. For the Leonids, making music was and is always self-therapy, an expression of and outlet for their own overconfidence, a cathartic way of blowing off steam - that's what makes them so strong, so captivating. In the upcoming festival season, the quintet will once again climb across stages and get hundreds of individuals tangled up in the mosh pit - with their new, fourth album "Sophisticated Sad Songs".



Tracklist:
1.01 - Leoniden - Motion Blur (3:25)
1.02 - Leoniden - A Million Heartbreak Songs (3:58)
1.03 - Leoniden - Necklace (3:41)
1.04 - Leoniden - Never Never (2:53)
1.05 - Leoniden - Sierra (4:13)
1.06 - Leoniden - Keep Fucking Up (2:58)
1.07 - Leoniden - You > you (2:38)
1.08 - Leoniden - Calculator (3:03)
1.09 - Leoniden - Balance Of Love (3:04)
1.10 - Leoniden - Tinnitus (4:26)