"WE'RE ALL GONNA FUCKING DIE," says the back of the sleeve of the
compact disc. And yes, yes we are. You and I aren't gonna live
forever. Not a chance in (the nonexistent) hell. Incongruity comes
into this when spinning the compact disc inside the sleeve. As, this
isn't music screaming out on the edges, or music weeping for the
frailty of mankind. Barbara Morgenstern's music always seems more
reassuring than that, warm and nurturing like a black cup of coffee,
huddled down in its own internal world, all flickering flames, far
removed from the oh-the-wind-and-the-rain that plays out outside, on
the other side of windows. Such said, maybe that's all that all music
is: reassurance. Like religion itself. Assuaging anxiety over
inevitable death. Over that paradox of existence: annihilation
acceptance. The song itself, "We're All Gonna Fucking Die," is one of
a handful of cuts on this, Morgenstern's third album, that find the
abstract-electro keyboard-droning songsmith hitting some kind of
kraut-rockist rhythmic stride, maybe even breaking out of those
cultivated climes of warmth and reassurance. Driving through the
rain, if that doesn't sound too much like a Bon Jovi song title.
After her last longplayer, Fjörden, oft found Morgenstern
building up opaque layers of keytone-drone and digi-crackles with the
help of Pole professor Stefan Betke, here, cuts like "We're All Gonna
Fucking Die" — with its aggressive syncopated synthbeat stabs
— and "Merci (Dass Es Dich Gibt)" — with its Pole-ish
"horizontal production" pulling pieces of the incessant rhythms in
and out of focus — and, most of all, the eight-minute title
track, ride a relentless
abstract-electro-equivalent-of-the-Dinger-beat out on a highway of
staccato/downpicked guitar and glissando piano. All are about motion,
repetition, building a kind of kinetic musical energy through
movement and rhythm. Other songs, of course, are happy to stay inside
and warm, to work in internal, heartwarming type ways. Nichts
Muss is, in either of these modes, a more direct disc than
Morgenstern's two prior efforts. Her keyboard lines are left more
"clean," her singing is more confident, the assembling of songs is
more a case of songwriting than of Pro Tools-ing. Betke and Thomas
Fehlmann both offer assistance, but this time Morgenstern doesn't
seem to lean on them that much. And, given that the songs herein are
as good as numbers like "Nichts und Niemand" — which is all
flushes of analog organ, torpid torch-song singing, blocked-out bass
shifts, and flickering drum programming — it might seem that
Morgenstern, seeing things for what they are, has found a growing
musical strength within. And, in this now, that's more assurance than
reassurance.
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