Culk

Sophie Löw shows what language is capable of – for better or for worse. »Dichterin« (»Female Poet«), the fourth song on her second album with the band Culk, perhaps provides best example: in it, the songwriter tackles the German language’s oh-so-generic masculine form by dismantling and reassembling the linguistic logics behind it: »Ich bin kein Dichter / Doch ich schreibe Gedichte / Du bist kein Richter / Und denkst du kannst richten über mich / Vergiss mein nicht, vergiss mein nicht.«. (»I’m not a [male] poet / But I write poems / You’re not a [male] judge / Yet you think you can judge me / Don’t forget mine, don’t forget mine.«) While that may seem like a deconstructive, high-performance sport, on the album »Zerstreuen über euch«, it sounded as uplifting as it did low-threshold. After all, just as language can’t get past the brain’s emotional centre, neither can the sparse yet emotionally charged post-punk of the Viennese group. Instead, it goes straight for it.