Suzy Spacks — Morfologic

Suzy Spacks burst on to the Berlin scene with a debut album that revisited East German folklore, an inventory of heritage comparable to Francis James Child. Characterised by a distinct finger-picking way of playing (strings stroked with the fingertips rather than played with the nails), Spacks arrangements bring forth anachronistic, nostalgia-filled tunes to be enjoyed by the fire in a datcha, at a time when the Wall was tumbling down, trampled by an eager youth greedy for amplified music and freedom. On her second album (recorded in one night after a break up), she dumps an imaginary albeit somewhat desperate bloke with the use of melodies sprinkled with rippling arpeggios, producing with "Your Insane Memory" a disenchanted ballad set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. With "Morfologic", Suzy Spacks does a 180 degree turn: little or no guitar, a fully digital rhythm section, samples galore and an even more ethereal voice that further blends with synthesizers arranged in layers in "Lindnerallee". Referred to in the opening track, the founder of the Bauhaus seems to have guided Spacks towards the industrial fringes of her mutating capital. In "Berlin Mon Amour", the longest and most successful track of the album, she builds a haunting melody from a Franglais chorus ("La nuit mon amour / Still by your side / Always will be") that is punctuated by sounds of construction, supported by Martenot waves, as if it were an answer to Johnny Greenwood’s score in "How To Disappear Completely". In conclusion, even if the album gives a certain sense of being incomplete, (especially because of "Mein Stuhl", a cacophony as incongruous as the cover which is an awkward tribute to Luigi Russolo), the eight tracks promise new horizons for Suzy Spacks.