Niemand

Reborn

If ever there was a band that gave life to that weird South African music phenomenon which has everyone who hears their music assuming they are an international act, then Niemand is it.

For months now, the four piece’s melodic rock has dominated airwaves, with songs like “Words” and “Simple Truth” easily slipping into the hearts and minds of music fans now rapidly cottoning onto the fact that Niemand is proudly South African – a truly homegrown group that makes music of a global standard.

That Niemand crafts songs so effortlessly memorable has much to do with the group’s namesake and frontman.

Joe Niemand has been quietly moving behind-the-scenes of the South African music industry, becoming an in-demand songwriter and performer for those in the know - credited for his intuitive gift for a melody and knack of crafting lyrics that speak of universal themes of love, struggle and redemption.

Put this to Joe, however, and this unassuming singer and songwriter is reluctant to make too big a fuss out of his unparalleled reputation in the South African music business, professing to hardly remembering his impressive slate of work. “I feel like my musical life is beginning with Reborn. It’s the album that I have been waiting to make for years because before this, my songwriting took the form of whoever I was writing for. With Reborn I wrote every song specifically for this album, with each representing something extremely important in my life.”

Much of Niemand’s low-profile has to do with Joe’s belief in letting the music speak for itself. And thankfully for fans of perfectly on-point rock music, Reborn’s set of 14-songs is gaining momentum, on the back of solid radio-play, the selection of “Rise” as Supersport’s official theme for last November’s UK Springbok rugby tour and plenty of word-of-mouth buzz around the group.

What sets apart Niemand’s debut is the intense journey the album represents – a representation through words, music and visuals (check out Reborn’s artwork) of Joe’s personal journey of the past 10 years.

Starting with the bleakness of songs like “Nowhere” (“cold coffee and a wet cigarette/life is great/got up this morning didn’t care to wake up/downed the last beer I ashed in last night/now I can’t remember where I left my girlfriend/I hope she’s safe”), Reborn is about a young man who lost his way and eventually found a path back to living a life of integrity, marked by faith. Along the way Joe has crafted a brace of songs that shimmer with an authentic life experience, whether downwardly spiraling (“White Lie”, “Tilted”)or euphoric (“Welcome Home”) or the moments that mark all our lives (“Words”).

Standouts abound but the song that best represents the full stop, the final straw in Joe’s despair is “Empty”, a moving, evocative ballad that is the stuff that goosebumps are made of (“Pick me up turn me inside out/turn me upside down, can’t you see I’m empty/pick me up throw me down kick me all around/can’t you see I’m empty? I’m empty”). “All I Have” is another gorgeous offering, sparsely produced, elevating Joe’s voice and lyrics (“I want to take you out, but I don’t have no money”) to centrestage on a song about the awakening of feelings of love in someone long dampened by life’s struggles. Radio favourite “Words” is another elegant counterpoint to the likes of “Empty” and “Simple Truth” which all come to life on the wings of intense power-rock.

The strength of Joe’s songwriting is a real feature of Reborn – and the 28-year-old has been honing his craft since he was a teenager growing up in the Eastern Cape. “I wrote my first decent song at 17,” Joe reveals, “and have been writing ever since”.

For someone who is acknowledged as one of South Africa’s leading composers, it took a while for Joe to welcome this side of his creative being into his life:  “In the beginning, I felt strange about writing music. I composed a piece of piano music for an Eisteddfod towards the end of school and in matric found myself in honours clothes for piano playing which was silly because it was the only thing I had done in piano.” Armed with an intelligence that had him looking at the world slightly askance, Joe headed for Pretoria after school to study music. “I thought it was going to be about the music that I was into which was rock but it was very much focused on light music and jazz,” Joe says of his course and so, faced with an armful of real work in his last year, he left before finishing his studies. “What I did benefit from were the people I engaged with – it was incredible. Music is about connecting with people and finding individuals as passionate about it as you are.” In retrospect, Joe sees the period spent studying, and working (from theatre performances to songwriting) as the time his songwriting craft really took form. “I had never thought about myself as a songwriter but everything began pointing in this direction in those years and so I let it draw me in.”

Reborn was produced by Marius Brouwer & Joe Niemand.

Niemand is also about live music, ‘Having a good studio album is just the starting point for what we do’ says Joe, who is joined by lead guitarist, Jake Odendaal, ex-Tree63 drummer, Thinus Odendaal,  bassist Trevor Smith to make up one South Africa’s most electrifying live acts.

Niemand’s live roster is filling up, including a trip to America in April 2006, and has included a show in Soweto for International AIDS Day in December 2005 where Niemand was astonished to find the audience singing along to their radio hits, proof of the group’s wide appeal!