Tristan Brusch makes it clear in the first sentence of IN THE BEGINNING that the self in his texts is literary: “Don’t worry about me, Tristan,” Brusch slips into the third person while singing – and from then on it goes wildly back and forth between the different roles, between childhood memories and their supposed authenticity, between explaining the world and processing trauma, between the hidden gloom of Chris Isaaks “Wicked Game”, the self-satisfied pathos of Klaus Hoffmann and the existentially desperate humor of Jacques Brel.
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This is obvious when he directly refers to Unholy’s popular funeral hit “Born to live”, but his song “Born to die” has more to offer than platitudes. Last but not least, the constant change of roles is also a safeguard, because it allows Brusch to go where it hurts – in the truest sense. He can dare to descend into the psychological depths of the perpetrator in a toxic relationship in “Thank you for not stopping loving me” – and who dares to do that: “I can’t stop hurting you.”
Brusch is loving, sometimes malicious, he is many different Tristans, and that is irritating and often painful. As much as the perspectives change, on this, his fourth German-language album (if you don’t count the songs for Ersan Montag’s “Woyzeck” production at the Berliner Ensemble), which was recorded in just four days with producer Olaf Opal, Brusch has found his voice and his sound, has said goodbye to musical experiments and sings sparsely orchestrated, warm chansons that oscillate between bitterness and optimism, melancholy and gallows humor. Or, as Brusch himself puts it in “Am Ende”: “A whole world between the two of us fits into this song.”
This review first appeared in Musikexpress 11/2025.