Lofi electro surf pop: also brilliant on its own: Brezel Göring

The shock was profound when the German-French musician Françoise Cactus died in February 2021 after a serious illness. For almost 30 years she was part of the Berlin duo Stereo Total, which she founded with her partner Brezel Göring in 1993, initially under the name Sigmund Freud Experience. Cactus, with her endlessly friendly, exalted spirit, was always the outshining part of the duo, Göring, with his shy, eccentric nature, was her reliable backup in the background – at least that was the impression from the outside.

But the two depend on each other like the day depends on the night, or like the analysand the analyst. A good two years ago, the astonishment was all the greater about Göring’s solo debut album “Psychoanalyse (Volume 2)”, which continued his Freudian zeal from the early 90s and became one of the biggest musical surprises of 2022. Because it underlined that Göring was able to create absurdly brilliant musical gems even without his long-time partner.

Cactus was nevertheless omnipresent on the album: not only through the diverse sampling of her voice, but also through the lyrics, which represented a kind of grief-coping cascade in an almost painfully intimate way. “It’s a shame that you’re gone/ I would have liked to have listened to you more often/ The streets are still the same/ But the rest is pretty battered,” Göring sang in the piece “Sanfter Wahn”. Music has rarely been as moving as on this album.

The music therapy from back then seems to have worked: although Françoise Cactus is also present on the new album “Friedhof der Moral”, the basic mood of the new songs is completely different than on the previous one. Instead of sad, depressing chansons in minor keys, this time the 54-year-old musician presents exuberant, major-key lofi electro surf pop.

As is often the case with Göring, the guitars sound as if they were bought for two small bills at the flea market, and the drums sound as if they had just been freed from decades-old attic dust. You could also call the music bedroom pop – only with Göring it doesn’t sound so wobbly and rumbly by accident, but deliberately.

This is also the case in the pre-single “Sexually charged”: “My thoughts/Sexually charged/Sadness/Sexually charged,” it says. In the accompanying video, Göring lies speechless and motionless on the therapy couch while the therapist reprimands him in a stern tone: “So, Mr. Göring, you’ve been receiving treatment here for two years now. They’re starting to have to tell me a lot.” If the helpless expert were to listen to his client’s music instead, he would certainly have enough to analyze. In “Chernobyl,” Göring fantasizes about being like Gudrun Ensslin, in “Tilidin” he sings about his intoxication and in “The Last Bullet” about his suicide.

Basically everything is in the usual (dis)order. Good for the audience, because they will once again be fantastically entertained with “Frieden der Moral.” And good for the analyst too, because he won’t run out of work so quickly.

Brezel Göring: “Graveyard of Morals” (Stereo Total Records/Flirt 99)

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