Various Artists: Funky Fräuleins Vol.2: 1968 – 1981

Various Artists
Funky Fräuleins Vol.2: 1968-1981
Grosse Freiheit
2011-01-18

This album is being sold with a Font o’ Swishy Funkiness and a pretzel’d limber babe in body paint, blonde hair over boob like one of those mystic flying bits of cloth that cover the genitalia of cherubs in oil paintings — in short, the exterior is decorative, and it invites you not to take the contents too seriously — but the compilation is strongest at those moments when one of the Fräuleins erupts with a sincere and full-bodied boom, planting herself on her dignity. I’m thinking in particular of Donna Gaines telling you in “Can’t Understand” to, “Please let me walk / With a steady beat” (originally Donna Summers). Other songs are fun and cute and suit the cover better: Uschi Moser summoning her Sugar-Sugar in “Sunny Honey”, and Heidelinde Weis grinning wide-eyed at “Der Supermann”. Superman is wunderbar. Oh! A male voice echoes her. Perhaps it is Nietzsche. “For fans of Marina label’s In-Kraut series,” offers the publicity blurb, and it is correct.

RATING 7 / 10