‘Short Stories’ is full of this humble restraint. Like any good storyteller, Jansen and Braun leave room for the unsaid, opening up spaces for interpretation that linger long in the listener's mind. This is also the speciality of songwriting genius Bob Dylan, whose ‘A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall’ ends the recording.

It's crazy how relevant this is today, given the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Jansen thinks it's crazy how relevant this song, written under the impression of the Cuban Missile Crisis, still is today. Together with the apocalyptic, heat-shimmering ‘Before the Rain,’ penned by the guitarist, the Dylan song gives the album a narrative arc reminiscent of a famous quote by Leonard Bernstein: ‘This will be our answer to violence: to make music more intense, more beautiful, more devoted than ever before.’ With ‘Short Stories’, Arne Jansen and Stephan Braun are doing their part to turn these words into musical reality.