What does love feel like when the world goes to hell? Tsar B, actually Justine Bourgeus, discusses such questions on her third album. The artist from Belgium, who also works as a film composer and producer, sounds so wonderfully desperate, consumed by desire and expansive that you can’t help but feel for her.
Apocalyptic R’n’B pop for the present
THE WRITER tells how Tsar B first falls in love with an author’s words, and then eventually with the author himself. Is this a story or the true story of how it came about? Actually, it doesn’t matter at all, because the glitchy pop gems and experimental compositions that Tsar B creates from the story stand for themselves. There is the instrumental intro, “Opening Scene”, with an organ that sounds dark behind a synthesizer fog.
Or the initially minimalistic “Symphony”, which then brings out the really big strings, the nervous single “Amor” or the voluptuous “Mrs. Impatience”. Tsar B is at her strongest when she shows her knack for playing with minimalism and maximalism, such as on “Into You” – or the almost, but only almost, too sweet Bryan Adams cover “Heaven”. Apocalyptic R’n’B pop for the present.
This review appears in Musikexpress 2/2026.
