The Rotterdammer Mark Lotterman is already on his fourth studio album with Year Without Summer. As the title suggests, it is not a record for the depressed listener who hopes for better times: Year Without Summer is even more than its predecessor Funny a melancholic record in which the hope for sunshine seems very far away. Lotterman sounds on most of the ten songs like Johnny Cash when he saw his
… end approaching. That means that almost every song knows how to hit a sensitive chord. Lotterman's lyrics are poetic and sometimes even very cryptic. They are also partly autobiographical, for example in the songs Leaving For School and the depressed Rolling Stones. The climax of his depression is reached in the sublime The Hell That We Create in which the only 29-year-old Lotterman drowns in self-pity as he looks back on the past, when he still dared to dream about a bright future. (BvdV)more
