New German Cinema | Brighton
New German Cinema Brighton
New German Cinema live in Brighton at Folklore Rooms on Saturday 25th April! Get tickets above, or from SeeTickets.
“Stormy and cathartic dark-pop gems.” The voice and songwriter of Fear of Men, Jess Weiss, carries that same lyrical precision and emotional intensity into her solo project New German Cinema. It’s been five years in the making, stretched between London and LA, built from late-night files, long silences and the quiet persistence of trying to finish something beautiful. Produced with Alex DeGroot (Zola Jesus, Cate Le Bon), it feels both forensic and devotional, the product of someone who doesn’t rush catharsis. Pain Will Polish Me presents both solitary and connective, as if built from long-distance transmissions between two dream states.
Weiss calls it a meditation on pop and European art-house auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It tracks the ways intimacy and control fold into one another until it’s impossible to tell where one ends. The songs are about the parts of yourself that dissolve in love, and the small acts of violence that come with being known. They move through claustrophobic relationships, obsession, surrender, cycles of suffering that start to feel like devotion. The language is pop but the feeling is something stranger, colder, more interior. The songs move in shadow. Layers of synth, vocal and guitar fold over one another, drawing from the cinematic tension of Fassbinder’s New German Cinema and the quiet dissonance of modern Berlin, where Weiss recorded fragments of the record, drifting between places that carry uneasy ghosts. Between dinner conversations about the city’s buried history and the surreal comfort of its present, she found herself tracing the outlines of love and loss, identity and dissolution.
The album’s lead track is My Mistake – a collaboration with Carson Cox of Merchandise. What began as an Italo disco experiment evolved into a goth club anthem, charged and restless. It captures the push and pull of Weiss’s themes – devotion as both destruction and release. Weiss has a knack for making pain feel both exquisite and familiar. The album artwork picks up these themes, hovering between the everyday mundanity of a Fassbinder domestic scene, and something less recognisable, punctuated by surreal elements that move us into dreamscape, both familiar and disquieting. The shell and sea reference Botticelli’s Venus: a figure born from sea foam created when Uranus’s severed genitals fell into the ocean – an image of creation through destruction. The shell becomes her vessel of birth, representing transformation, protection and fertility – the bridge between divine creation and human life. Weiss extends this theme of renewal to the personal; her baby daughter’s babbles feature on the record. https://newgermancinema.bandcamp.com/
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Upcoming Love Thy Neighbour shows:
03022026 – Junior Brother. Prince Albert
17022026 – caroline. Chalk
20022026 – Mermaid Chunky. Revenge
26022026 – Maria Somerville. Green Door Store
19032026 – Gong + Henge. Chalk
20032026 – Beans on Toast. Concorde 2
26032026 – Heavenly. Hope & Ruin
26032026 – Joan Shelley. Lewes Constitutional Club
07042026 – Bibi Club. The Prince Albert
15042026 – Martin Carthy. Lewes Constitutional Club
16042026 – Martin Carthy. Lewes Constitutional Club
17.04.2026 – SUEP. Alphabet
20042026 – Lande Hekt. Prince Albert
22042026 – Oslo Twins. Prince Albert
25042026 – New German Cinema. Folklore Rooms
29042026 – Acid Mothers Temple. Hope & Ruin
01052026 – Love. Concorde 2
02052026 – House of All. Hope & Ruin
05052026 – Lorelle Meets The Obsolete. The Hope & Ruin
07052026 – LYR. Komedia
10052026 – Sean Rowe. Green Door Store
10052026 – Lucrecia Dalt. Chalk
19052026 – Charlie Parr. Green Door Store
25112026 – Ozric Tentacles. Lewes Constitutional Club
Accessibility: We operate within a Grade-II listed building, built in the 1860s. Although built as a school for working-class children, we do not have the facility to give unencumbered access to users with physical access needs. There are two large staircases to the live room. We are looking to improve our accessibility for all users, any requests for special requirements please do communicate with us and we will endeavour to meet your needs.
New German Cinema Brighton
New German Cinema Brighton