Lucia Cadotsch, The Sparks, Peter Fox, Kevin Morby: The pop albums of the week in the sound check

The Sparks: The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte (Iceland)
Ron and Russell Mael have been driving bumper cars at their own fairground for over 50 years. Also on the new record, a will-o’-wisp trip from vaudeville, art pop, glam, musical, symphonic poetry. The miraculous absence of grand melodies is as much a part of their formula as the chanted, repetitive one-liners. Retro fetish, synthetic sounds, powerhouse 8-bit aesthetics, glockenspiel, romantic orchestra – all wrapped up. But beware, under the squeaky-colored pop polish, things are boiling this time too. In every song you will find a modern drama: isolation, the sadness of the world, life and love disappointment. So many people are crying in their lattes. A force. Oliver Schwesig, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

Lucia Cadotsch: AKI (heart core)
The pop music of our time is terribly boring, sings the plaintive chorus of those who are bored with streaming fodder. You just have to search a bit. And finds, for example, Lucia Cadotsch’s solo album. This is initially classified under “jazz”, but extends far beyond that and sometimes makes you think of the wild times of the late 1960s, when bands like Soft Machine lived and played radical ideas. The band has a top-class line-up, master guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel is on board as a star guest and, in general, really important music can finally be heard here again. Andreas Mueller, moderator

Peter Fox: Love Songs (Warner)
You have to digest the fact that his “Stadtaffe” – one of the most successful German-language pop albums of the last decades – is now 15 years ago. Also that we now live in very different times. Post-Covid, Ukraine war, economic crisis, you name it. Peter Fox still firmly believes in rooftop bar beats, Tuscany and Dubai trip lyrics and gentle social criticism. For one song he even gets Adriano Celentano on the album and simply calls the record “Love Songs”. That’s how pop escapism works. Christine Franz, music journalist

Kevin Morby: More Photographs (A Continuum) (Cargo)
If an indie musician wanted to release the same album again, slightly different, it would normally be considered a bad idea. But Kevin Morby has good reasons. With “This Is A Photograph” last year he created an absolutely captivating arc of memories from his childhood days. With this, the singer/songwriter from Tennessee started a process that is like pasting a photo album: images from the past that still deserve attention keep popping up. And it’s slowly becoming something even bigger. Kai Müller, Tagesspiegel