Il Civetto Liebe auf Eis - Tour 2024

When Il Civetto come, the sun comes up. No joke, it's just like that. "We can't explain it either," says Leon Keiditsch, "but this year it's happened again and again: that it stops raining as soon as we go on stage at a festival. Rain before, rain after, and the sun shines during our performance. It's a bit spooky." Keiditsch is the singer of the Berlin pop group Il Civetto, who actually have a very special gift: when the night seems darkest, Il Civetto know the light switch. This applies not only to their concerts, but to the band's music in general - and especially to their new album: "Love on Ice" combines light with shadow, the vibe of a warm summer night with the hangover afterwards. "Love on Ice" is the pop of a generation that has been cheated out of its future by its older generation, but doesn't want to give it up without a fight. It's about love, hope, solidarity - and radiant melodies that simply make you happy. "Sounds a bit like climate porn to me," said Il Civetto fan Luisa Neubauer in a joint interview when Keiditsch explained his thoughts on "Love on Ice". And yes, theoretically that would even be conceivable with Il Civetto. After all, the foundation of this group from the very beginning was its enormous openness and musical versatility. Lars Löffler-Oppermann (saxophone, clarinet), Leon Bollinger (drums & percussion) and Keiditsch knew each other from school and combined their various influences when they founded Il Civetto: Bollinger's Manu Chao and desert blues influences with the klezmer and Balkan beats of the trained clarinetist Löffler Oppermann and the classical singing skills of Keiditsch, who was considered an opera talent as a child. From 2010 onwards, the friends played with Il Civetto in the Berlin subway, in techno clubs and later at festivals all over the world. The band had already released two albums when the current line-up with Dany Ahmad (bass) and guitarist Robert Kondorosi was established in 2019, in which Il Civetto reinvented themselves as a hybrid pop band with attitude and German lyrics with the album »Späti del Sol« (2022). Now »Liebe auf Eis«. Il Civetto have once again made a huge artistic leap. After Keiditsch had put together ideas, sketches and fragments in late summer and autumn 2022, the five friends worked on the new songs in their Berlin studio from January 2023. They then recorded »Liebe auf Eis« again with producer Ralf Christian Mayer (Clueso, Cro, etc.), who has always understood the band's vision best. While they were on tour all spring and summer, they met up with Mayer for sessions at Jazzanova and the legendary Berlin Hansa Studios, where parts of »Späti del Sol« had already been created. "Last time we arrived there full of awe, this time we really took over the room and made it our safe space," says Keiditsch. The confidence was due to the fact that all Il Civetto members experienced the production of "Love on Ice" as their most intense to date: "It was a very inspiring time in which we grew even closer together as a band," says Bollinger. "Robert and Dany worked intensively with Ralf as co-producers, and we now work together blindly." You can hear it: against the backdrop of their growing friendship, "Love on Ice" has become the band's most personal album to date. Il Civetto have always been musically multifaceted, exciting, and rousing. Now they are laying their hearts on the table, which makes this music even more intense. "Alles was ich hab" is a shimmering duet with Frank Dellé from Seeed, a friend of the band: a bouncy, euphoric road song that is about appreciating the moment. »Songs only ever become really cool when you really let a piece of soul flow into the lyrics,« says Leon, who opens up like never before on »Liebe aus Eis«. This applies to songs like »Boys Do Cry,« in which Leon, together with the Berlin musician Trille as a featured guest, describes his discomfort at growing up as a male-identified child in a traditional macho role. It's about James Bond, 50 Cent, Rambo III - and in the middle of it all is 15-year-old Leon Keiditsch. »All forms of toxic masculinity were considered cool,« he remembers. »Emancipating myself from that wasn't easy.« The song cleverly refers back to The Cure's »Boys Don't Cry,« and the way Robert Kondorosi's guitar quotes the original's distinctive melody in the chorus is a testament to the band's musical mastery. Everything on this album is incredibly dense and catchy, played and produced to the point. The rock guitars in the third single, »Nie wieder Winter« (featuring MoLa), the electrifying global pop of »Blue Hour«, the rich brass sections and polyphonic guitars between rock, Latin, indie – everything meshes together and is so compelling that you never want to leave the dance floor again. The music is consistently intoxicating, rousing, euphoric, the lyrics are not always. Because Il Civetto say what needs to be said: Another explicitly autobiographical song is the introspective »Fragen«, which is about farewell and loss and how the scars of childhood shape us forever. These facets of existence have never been included in the emotional spectrum of this music before.
not imagine, now they are making »Love on Ice« the most intense Il Civetto album to date. This also applies - in a different way - to »Hollywood End« and the powerful hymn »Rain in Rome and Paris«, a love song in the face of climate catastrophe. »We live in a time in which the world increasingly seems to be heading in the wrong direction,« says Leon Keiditsch. »But no matter how hopeless it may seem, songs like ›Future in the Wind‹ should motivate us to take to the streets and fight for a better future.« Il Civetto know, of course: we can only pull the cart out of the mud ourselves, on this dark, beautiful, tumbling earth. »Love on Ice« is the soundtrack to dancing on the volcano, on the edge of the crater - and the band will soon bring it back to the stage: the biggest tour in Il Civetto history to date is coming up. The light will be stronger than the shadow on these evenings. The sun will shine, there will be lots of love in the room.