Synth pop as liberation: Erin Birgy exchanges intricate guitars for dazzling synthesizers.
“I didn’t want to hide behind complicated music anymore” – this sentence from Erin Elizabeth Birgy aka Mega Bog describes pretty well what makes END OF EVERYTHING different from their previous releases. Instead of complex, freaky songs between folk, jazz, pop and psychedelic, there is now one thing above all: hits, hits, hits.
Catchy songs are nothing new for Birgy (e.g. the beautiful “Diary Of A Rose” from the 2019 album DOLPHINE), but in such a density and so direct, so unabashedly pop it is new. There are hardly any guitars anymore, but there are all the more synthesizers: Between 70s Italo disco and 80s sad boy pop, the songs always glitter on the right side of kitsch. Birgy’s great, dark voice adapts to this and alternates between softer tones and diva-like roars.
END OF EVERYTHING is supposed to be a liberation album, new simplicity and big melodies as an answer to the shitty state of the world. And even if the trauma of recent years – forest fires in Birgy’s homeland of California, a pandemic – can be found in the dark sparkle of the synths and Birgy’s lyrics, this pop transformation of an already extraordinary, but always somewhat tricky and complicated artist succeeds across the board.
Author: Elias Pietsch