Happy New Year! I welcome 2021 with open arms, and I look forward to discovering so many albums that have been released under extreme conditions of 2020.

I happened across this album by certain accident but as well by happy surprise. Wir, a musical by Lukas Nimscheck, tells the story of two gay couples and their adventures in child adoption. I will admit, that is the extent of my plot knowledge, as my understanding of German is terrible non-existant.

From the opening number Heute ist dieser Tag (Today is the Day), we enter an electropop 1980s “99 Luftballons” keyboard rift fever-dream of sorts. The feeling of floating through a modern, fast paced, driving, melodic story has just begun. The opening number features some relevant dialog that I’m sure is important, but I’m too busy listening to the beats and the autotuned church bells playing Here Comes the Bride. For anyone who enjoys albums with total electronic auditory immersion, put on some nice headphones and turn up the volume. Take a nice walk through the city and let this album serve to add order to an otherwise disorderly world.

With the absence of most theatre in the year 2020, many of us have sought refuge in the comfort of cast recordings and proshots. This cast recording gives us some great musical storytelling along the same vein as 2016’s American Psycho, driven by electro beats, backup vocals, synthesizer magic, etc.

In a way, this recording falls into a very narrow genre sub-category, with few albums falling into the same sub-type, musically. And we’ve seen many recordings as such in 2020: Amelie 2020 London, Emojiland 2020 Off-Broadway, Black Friday 2020 Starkid, Ratatouille 2020 TikTok, among others.

2020 has forced almost every industry to immediately adapt and change it’s production strategy, with musical theater being no different if not worse off, with a full year of darkness. I assume history will look back at this moment in time as a pivotal moment in musical theatre, with the future of the story being unknown to me. But I am looking forward to seeing what it looks like. Wir: Familie ist, was Man Draus Macht makes me feel and hear a glimpse of what’s to come. Productions like this are actively writing the history of musical theater.

This album has served a very welcome surprise at the beginning of 2021. With the backdrop of political and cultural turmoil in my country, an international pandemic at its worst, and no reopening of Broadway in near sight, at least I have albums like this to serve a distraction and get me excited for the future.

Available:
https://amzn.to/2XrHip5

On Spotify: