Einsturzende Neubauten

Einsturzende Neubauten’s last few records have shown the industrial-music godfathers exploring sounds that resemble something closer to Serge Gainsbourg’s mild-mannered jazz pop than the construction-site clatter that made them famous. The Jewels breaks that trend by drawing from the beautiful clang and future-primitive hooks that litter EN’s discography. “Ich Komme Davon” and “Ansonsten Dostojewsky” contain secret sonic references to other Neubauten records, and breathe life into an elegant and cohesive new approach. “I Kissed Glenn Gould” shows the group is as angsty as it wants to be, but not entirely humorless. Neubauten often butts half-baked snippets of melodies against disturbing noise collages. The Jewels jams these truncated compositional bits into distinctively Neubauten songs that groove like no other, while upholding the trademark German/English mantras, banshee cries and power-tool dirge that laid the foundation upon which a musical genre was modeled. Four stars