The new album by Toni Kater
"...To release such a quiet, almost melancholic album is almost courageous in times like these. Their uncompromisingly original style makes the album a thoroughly honest affair. No squinting at fashions or trends, no courting the listener's favor....Everything is just right here - the arrangements (whose sparseness is really good for the songs), the very pictorial, poetic lyrics, the melodies of the songs. Everything is magnificently mixed to create a beautiful, yet never kitschy sound. If you don't listen to these songs properly, it's your own fault ..."Holger Beythien (DLF/ SWR/ WDR, retired)
With "JEMALS" Toni Kater meets us melancholic and combative, deep and direct as rarely before. It is perhaps her most consistent album, which she has developed and produced for the first time without any outside influence. Like a chamber play, she deals with the essential themes of life and contrasts them with love and personal responsibility. She sings more deeply, tells long and personal stories, stark and warming, and manages to transform what is difficult to say into something beautiful and hopeful. Uniting everyday life and poetry.
In BU4 13 9, for example,she sings about meeting an old man in the cemetery and helping him to find his grave. An encounter that happened just like that. In her monologue , she reflects on saying goodbye and growing old, questions honesty and repression and tries to find a way to deal with them. Perhaps one of her greatest strengths is her ability to constantly discover new perspectives, to open doors where there were none before, to remove the "M" from power and instead pay attention. (Blue House)
She has once again reduced the music on "JEMALS", Toni Kater's eighth studio album, to a minimum. The songs, which are often overlong in times of maximum brevity, are accompanied almost exclusively by acoustic guitar and electric guitar delays. You think of storytelling, follow her words, which sometimes come across as crystal clear and then again on several levels, and find yourself at the end. "JEMALS" is an honest and up-close album with which Toni Kater once again manages to remain unbounded. In January 2025, she was nominated for the German Record Critics' Award.
