17. September 2022
Has the whole world gone mad or is it us? The local duo Cari Cari plays with this question on their new album “Welcome To Kookoo Island”. Alexander Köck and Stephanie Widmer take you into their very own musical cosmos, which is not only colorful and catchy, but also quite optimistic. “Maybe we just need this happy feeling,” says Widmer. In any case, the result is a real blessing in dark times.
An internationally acclaimed debut, sold-out concerts across the continent, then a vinyl recording with a large orchestra: things have been going pretty well for Cari Cari in recent years. That’s not the only reason why one can be “relatively satisfied”, as Widmer remarked with a smile. The claim to build a “own world” has been fulfilled quite well. “We definitely made an effort,” Köck nodded in the APA interview. From the sound to the artwork to the stage design and merchandise, everything is connected and runs together with the two creative minds. “Everything went as hoped. It really turned out to be the world we envisioned.”
And in the case of the second album, which will also be presented live on an extensive tour from Monday, this world is populated by groovy sounds, catchy melodies, but also more complex moments and a lot of originality. New ingredients were found, and yet the new pieces clearly sound like Cari Cari. “I also don’t have the feeling that it’s like a corset,” says Köck. “Our voices, what we can do, what our taste is like: that’s just a filter. No matter what we put in the top, Cari Cari comes out the bottom.”
In this respect, you don’t let yourself be pressed into anything that doesn’t correspond to your own feelings, as some producers have already tried. “We actually always start from scratch to build this thing up,” explained drummer and singer Widmer. “That’s also a search.” One has just found an island with the new songs: “After five or six songs, this common thread appeared: submarines, diving, fleeing into another world,” said Köck. “We were better off at the time than we had been for a long time. Our studio is on Lake Neusiedl. We made music, swam in the lake, cooked. It was an extremely good time, but at the same time, of course, we realized that bad things were happening outside of this little bubble.”
This is how the idea for “Kookoo Island” came regarding. “The whole world is going mad and we are the island of the blessed? Or are we the crazy ones?” asked Köck, laughing. “We do not know it. But it was a very nice analogy for us that we were able to pull through.” And also for the music business, in which out of 50 conversations, “only one is regarding music and the other 49 regarding algorithms or TikTok”, as the singer puts it and guitarist summarized. “But that’s not how we work, and that’s not how our music works either. At the end of the day, we are just happier on Kookoo Island.”
This is quite understandable: Be it the pulsating energy of the opener “Jelly Jelly”, the danceable gesture of “No Proper Life” or the melody of “Around The Bend” that sounds like summer, sun and a thirst for adventure – Cari Cari understand it, in this one to serve an enormous bandwidth in a good half hour without losing sight of what we have in common. The songs inevitably get stuck in your ear canals, sometimes they are gripping and rocky, only to drift off into the psychedelic and deliver surprises the next moment. “We go into the songs with a vision, but it’s very important to be open to it when things turn off somewhere,” said Köck. “Otherwise you would block your own ideas.”
So Cari Cari want to keep a “childlike naivety”. “What’s around the next bend, maybe a crocodile?” Köck grinned and alluded to two songs on the record. “Ultimately, it’s a constant struggle: on the one hand, you want to get better, to understand everything better. But you don’t want to fall into the trap of getting calculating. Curiosity is very important when making music. Rationally, none of what we’re doing makes any sense,” laughed the musician.
Speaking of childhood: When Alexander Köck’s grandmother saw the video for “Jelly Jelly” playing in a submarine, she said to her grandson: “You’re still doing the same thing as when you were ten or twelve years old.” After all, both of them would have back then I liked making my own videos. “Perhaps you can also see that the path is the goal,” said Köck with a wink. “Even if that sounds trite. The trick is just staying hungry and not getting too fixated on one thing. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so it’s all small steps.” And that’s probably the best way to explore a place as beautiful as Kookoo Island.
(The interview was conducted by Christoph Griessner/APA)
Cari Cari on tour, Austria dates: 19.9. Arena Vienna, 30.9. Conrad Sohm Dornbirn, 1.10. Culture Quarter Kufstein, 5.10. Posthof Linz, 6.10. Orpheum Graz, 11.10. Rockhouse Salzburg, caricariragazzi.com