Stereo Total

An album title with not one, but two exclamation marks, meaning something akin to "what a palaver"as it primes the listener for songs like "Cinemascope". Themes such as personal injuries ("Ich bin cool"), betrayal ("Mes copines"), personality deficiencies brought on by drug abuse ("Methedrine"), rage ("Hass-Satellit"), inflated opinions of oneself ("Brezel says"), suicide ("Le Spleen"), grief ("Dancing with a memory") and souls in torment ("Elektroschocktherapie") are presented in widescreen format in and often in the most entertaining fashion. Francoise Cactus apparently once said of herself: "I am a linguistic artist who can live with the laughs". Which says it all really, although Stereo Totals penchant for wordplay is not in evidence in all of the lyrics on this record. Many tracks here echo the rather more sombre, desperate songs she wrote for her first band "Les Lolitas". Nevertheless, the anarchic humour which we have come to associate with Stereo Total resurfaces on compositions like "Keine Musik" and "Einfach". Musically, this Stereo Total disc, their twelfth, cannot be readily aligned with anything at all. If earlier albums resonated with influences from chanson, trash or disco to punk, rocknroll and NDW (German New Wave), Stereo Total have now arrived in their very own musical universe which pays no heed to stylistic devices, reminiscent of "rien de tout". What we can say: Francoise Cactus excels in the art of 8-track cassette recording, thus creating an extraordinary sonic experience. Brezel Goering draws on his favoured array of instruments more likely to be found in the hands of children in households where a musical education is not on the agenda: plastic baby organ and dreadful mouse piano, accompanied by home-made guitars glued together by less than gifted artisans.