Karin Rabhansl

We may imagine Karin Rabhansl as a happy person.

Buoyantly, the singer from the Bavarian Forest turns the guitars up loud on her fifth studio album “Rodeo”. The raven flies again – but this time it wants to go where it has never been before.

On “Rodeo” Karin Rabhansl cheerfully shifts her own parameters. The new-found musical hardness suits her well. But the record is also a little love letter to heroines and heroes she holds in high esteem, such as Led Zeppelin, Kyuss, Weezer, Radiohead, Sigur Rós and PJ Harvey.

The album title “Rodeo” stands for the ride of life.

The dialect riot queen from Trautmannsdorf Rock City no longer tells her dark and colourful milieu studies only in the first person, but from the neutral position of the observer and chronicler. Remarkable in navel-gazing times like these: the lyrics observe closely, but judge little and above all don’t whine.

At heart, “Rodeo” is about holding on. About coping. And about gathering all your courage and taking the reins when things no longer add up.

Silently hovering over Rabhansl’s stories is the realisation that this life is not an easy one and never was. And that the world is not a per se good or bad place, but often simply a tricky one – strange and beautiful and yet full of trapdoors and shallows.