If Serge Gainsbourg and Nena (of “99 Luftballons” fame) had a love child, and he grew up as latchkey kid in 1980s Berlin, there’s a good chance that kid would sound something like Stereototal.
Over the course of 14 years, eight albums, and 163 songs, the Berlin-based duo of Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring have developed a repertoire of synthesized beats that draws equally on French chansons and German electro.
If that sounds complicated, don’t worry: Stereototal manages to blend its diverse elements in a light-hearted manner—nothing like the pretentious ear-death often lumped under the broad umbrella of “experimental.”
Singer Francoise concedes, “Both of us have a different musical background. Before I played in a garage and rock and roll band, and Brezel was more experimental. We tried to figure out something that would please both of us.”
But as you might expect from a band whose singers are called Cactus and Pretzel, the experimentation doesn’t end with a few synth grooves—they also sing in German, French, English, and even occasionally Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese.
Francoise recalls her pre-Stereototal days of living in Berlin and singing in French: “I thought, this is stupid, the people can’t understand it. So I wrote some songs in German.”
Her openness paid off—German fans went crazy for songs in their own language, and Francoise’s kitty-cat French accent added a sweetness to the lyrics. However, she concedes that perhaps not all languages are equally suitable for making music.
“It’s true that for some kinds of songs, some languages are better than others,” she said. “French is really good for love songs, for example.”
And when it comes to love (and, ahem, lust), Stereototal seems to know what they’re talking about. From male prostitutes (“Ich bin der Stricherjunge”) to nice behinds (“Schoen von Hinten”) and threesomes (“Liebe zu Dritt”), sex is a common thread in much of the band’s work. But their free-love attitude is balanced by lyrical restraint, so the result is humorous and quirky, not tawdry.
