Martin Spengler & the wrong Viennese

15 Years of Foisch - Anniversary Tour.

Martin Spengler & the wrong Viennese

have become an established voice in the chorus of the new Viennese song with their “Schrammel soul.” And now: “It could all be completely different.” So is it really “something completely different” this time? In Ottakring, doesn’t it still smell like chocolate, doesn’t death still take everything lightly, and love everything seriously?

Yet “out there on the streets,” a new wind is blowing, one that “stirs things up,” and rifts are opening up in this city’s traditional Viennese folk-song-like sense of community. Yet “It could all be completely different” is also a utopia, the glimmer of another, better world.

And so Martin Spengler, too, reinvents himself and his songs and lyrics, infusing them with a renewed urgency—partly with unprecedented seriousness, partly with melancholic wit and loving longing, indeed with a bright utopia. For time and again, the only thing that helps is seeking refuge in one another, and so once again it is only love that remains, because “with her, everything is a big ‘Yay!’”