Herman Düne

Somewhere along the line David-Ivar ‘Ya Ya’ Herman Düne stopped writing ‘Herman Düne songs’. By that I mean the kind of lyrically adept, self-aware tunes that made you want to both tap all of you toes and urgently grasp the record sleeve to work out exactly what he was saying in his lilting, Franco-Swedish drawl. Tracks like ‘This Will Never Ever Happen’, or ‘The Enemy’s Gone…’ (with its sugary declaration that “I’m the kinda man for a capital sin”) were intelligent and beautifully crafted pop songs. Yet between 2005’s Not On Top and this year’s Giant David seems to have laid to rest the wordsmith within.

On Giant there was a clear divide between his own bouncy, Jonathan Richman-esque love tunes and his brother Andre’s adept, more complex numbers. That’s partially what made Giant so listenable, the divide between David’s horn-drenched summer anthems and Andre’s more percussive, introspective songs. This sense of a split in the group only deepened when it emerged Andre wouldn’t be touring Giant with the rest of the band, instead staying in Berlin to pursue musical avenues that only briefly raised their head on that record, namely jazz.

Perhaps it’s fair to see David as the more comfortable with the band’s increased commercial success – their ability to play to thousands in their native France, their signing to a major (and all the muso politics that entails), the use of one of their early tunes (‘Little Architect’) on a French advert. Even their high billing at this summer’s festival circuit, be it End Of The Road or Green Man, where I saw them tear up the Folky Doke stage, hurling themselves into a tight, giddy rendition of Giant’s highlights. Or at least the half of Giant that can be credited to David. Tonight it’s hard to say that what we’re seeing is Herman Düne. Sure, there’s Neman behind the drums, and The Babyskins doing their best swooning Shangri-La impression on backing vocals. Yet, shorn of a brass section or even a bass player, David’s songs sound dangerously bare. Almost weak. Even his nimble guitar skills can’t plug the holes in the songs where more flesh belongs, little riffs awkwardly compensating for the places where more sound should be, where (dare I say it) better lyrics once were.

The formula for a David Herman Düne song now follows something along the lines of – David conversing with his ‘baby’; she replies with something cute and forlorn, beginning with, ‘David’; David reaches a conclusion, be it “take her back to New York City”, or that his “baby’s not afraid” anymore. Most disheartening, the new songs he plays tonight follow the exact same formula, while it’s the oldest tunes, ‘Not On Top’ and ‘Show Me The Roof’, that light up the set, David’s lithe, agile frame curling around his guitar as he playfully bounds on stage. The tracks from Not On Top and Mas Cambios deal with real life, its worries, loves and desires. I hope that David doesn’t mistake ‘pop’ songs, or (even worse) commercial success, with dumbing down. Maybe he’s just in a place right now where he doesn’t want to write about specifics. That’s cool; but perhaps it’s best for them to make it less noticeable that, without backing, David’s new songs lack not only specificity, but also, sadly, a little originality.