Following their versions of 14 national anthems, seven takes on Sympathy for the Devil, and cod-fascistic covers of Queen and others, the industrial troupe alight on their kitschiest reinterpretations yet: songs from The Sound of Music, amusingly rendered in stentorian synthpop and the guttural vocals of Milan Fras. This already high concept was sent into the ionosphere by their decision to debut it in North Korea in 2015, making them the first western rock band to play the country. The notion that isolated North Korean culture vultures would presume western rock bands are typified by gruff, bearded Slovenians declaring their love for cream-coloured ponies and crisp apple strudels is hilarious, and Laibach get points for this masterful bit of culture jamming alone.
On record, their covers are stirring, funny and thought provoking. The arrangements offer moments of beauty, like the haze of harmony that conjures Edelweiss’s field of flowers under a growing shadow of violence, while Lonely Goatherd has every ounce of its catchiness wrung out of it via a glam-rock stomp.
Fras’s horrorcore take on Do-Re-Mi is a one-note joke, but elsewhere he helps us rethink the movie. His magnificent theatricality on Sixteen Going on Seventeen, a duet with a dutifully coy Marina Mårtensson, brings out the latent creepiness of the teenage suitor purporting to be a protector: “Tertally unprepared are yeuu / To faaace a worrrrld of men!” he growls with lascivious delight. Indeed, he suggests that loss of innocence – personal and national – is the very core of The Sound of Music. The discovery of sex by both Maria and Liesl happens as Austria is corrupted by the Third Reich, after all. By braying, “I’d like to stay and taste my first champagne”, in So Long, Farewell, Fras shows how the line is really about our animal desperation to grow up. But by delighting in My Favourite Things in the same voice, he suggests that innocence never fully leaves us. So where does all of this leave North Korea? “How do you solve a problem like Korea” they wonder, parroting the paternalistic stance the west has towards it. Gloriously silly it may be, but this album is as bright as that favourite copper kettle.
• This article was amended on 26 November 2018 to correct the spelling of Milan Fras.
