Pop: "The Nino from Vienna" – new record and tour

Vienna / Claudia Reicherter
20/10/2018

Every two weeks or so, Nino Mandl, who calls himself a musician Der Nino from Vienna, performs in his home town at the Theater am Spittelberg. The 100-year-old, who has been waiting for tickets for over an hour, thrills the 31-year-old crumpled boy with the boy's crumpled face under thick brown hair, who bows with as much modesty as acoustic guitar, solo or with Austropop-Perlen-Heber Ernst Molden or the violinist David Hebenstreit aka Sir Tralala, who established in 2008 a contact with the label Problembär.

Since then, Der Nino from Vienna has been considered the Austrian answer to Bob Dylan. He ended up accepting that, although he prefers to prefer the Beatles, Ramones, Syd Barrett and Helmut Qualtinger as models. He also celebrates his birthday on the same day "as the Dylan", he said at one of the concerts in Spittelberg. Pause. "So, almost." In this songwriter, breaks and phrasing say as much as words, which he always articulates very tense, usually accompanied by an ambiguous smile. Similarly, when he announces "Concert", a song about the Railjet's trip to a concert in St. Pölten. The song from the album "The Nino from Vienna", which he just released, is presented for the first time live. His fastest song was "almost hysterical".

The other eleven songs from the black album with embossed gold number – mainly on the Viennese High German and four on "Danube Town" – of love ("Lola"), of the daily life ("jukebox", "Alles pbadt") and sometimes of an "Eierkick", for which he would prefer the well maintained domestic crash: "draw against Ried".

The entire album looks like a jukebox, a collection of musical and literary heroes, from Wienerlied to Tom Waits, from Jandl to Joyce, which reveals new aspects with each listening. "Concert" represents the Punk-Rock department.

The connection is Mandl's voice. It sounds like suffering, threshing, snotty, longing, almost pbadionate, but utterly serene – until the last balkan-jazzy sprechgesang-vortex. Because he's now playing the record live with the band – December 12 in Stuttgart Merlin – it's now the first time with Spittelberg.