There were many dark times in American/Global pop music. Disco immediately comes to mind as does the Euro-pop garbage that filled the dance clubs in the 90s. Paris-Berlin, Berlin based duo Stereo Total’s eighth release, balances on a very dangerous line: the line between such genres as disco and Euro-pop and good music. Fortunately for them, it pays off for most of the album. Unfortunately for me, it makes this album really hard to review.
Paris-Berlin is an album of outstanding, fabulous hits and very forgettable misses with, believe it or not, songs that teeter the line of hit and miss. Although fundamentally electro, Stereo Total uses a wide range of sounds and influences. The record bounces from complete minimalism (Baby Revolution) to the complete grandiose (Mehr Licht) with a little electroclash, 60s pop and new wave thrown in the middle.
The album has some incredible hits. “Mehr Licht,” sounds like a dancier mix of Money-era and recent KMFDM, and could even possibly be a throwback to the KMFDM song “Licht” (Mehr Licht translates to “more light”). The best song, “Lolita Fantome,” is a dreamy, minimalist, new wave-ish song about a ghost-lolita who drives lonely men crazy.
Although the forgettable songs like “Miss Rebellion des Hormones” can easily be brushed aside, or un-checked when you rip it free from the radio station you work for, there are a lot of songs that really balance on that line of good and bad. “Relax Baby Be Cool” with its constant repetition of the line “relax baby be cool” and “woohoo” in the background, it’s hard to decide if this is the catchiest thing ever or the most annoying thing ever. “Ta Voix au Telephone,” with its heavy disco-funk sound, is hard to pinpoint whether the song is cool or incredibly lame.
Although the sound of this album gets a little questionable at times, the vocals and lyrics are absolutely outstanding. Singer Françoise Cactus ranges from playful (Komplex mit dem Sex) to Kim Gordon-esque fury (Plus Minus Null). If you haven’t noticed by now, a lot of the song titles, hence the lyrics, are in another language. Although Stereo Total have used seven languages throughout their career, they narrow it down to three to make this album. Despite that, it is not hard to decipher that most of the lyrics are politically charged. Stereo Total does a great job at balancing fun, nonsensical lyrics with social ideas. Some of the best lyrics come from “Plastic” (Plastic politicians/ In a plastic world/ With plastic-suicide bombers/ Going to plastic paradise/ I wanna be plastic too/ And die for plastic ideas like you) and Baby Revolution, a song about sexual revolution (Out of the bedroom into the streets/ The bed is the last barricade of bourgeois life). Can you say sexual Marxism?
Overall, with its balance of bad songs and good songs (mostly good) and its lyrical balance of fun, sexually charged nonsence with political ideas, Paris-Berlin should be part of any listener’s well balanced musical diet (yea, yea, lame metaphor, I know). The hits in this album far outweigh the misses, and, most importantly, this album is just too damn fun. Being their eighth release, it makes me wonder why I haven’t heard of them sooner.
