Andrea Schroeder - The angel above Berlin

A dark muse like no other, with that Teutonically decadent spleen and the irresistible allure of the cabaret chanteuse. An imagery made entirely of silk and ostrich feathers, cursed poetry and velvet sensuality, sepia-toned snapshots and fragments of old noir films. The neuroses of today's hyper-technological Germany fuse with the night-club languor of a lost Mitteleuropa, with a live wire of unease always snaking through the impetuous whirl of her verses. All this, and more, is what Andrea Schroeder's repertoire has to offer: poet, as well as singer-songwriter and musician. Her songbook has inherited the legacy of such icons as Leonard Cohen, Nico and Nick Cave, filtered through her fascination with noir-film atmospheres and the theatrical hues of Brechtian cabaret and Marlene Dietrich-style Thirties glamour. In her compositions, as stark as they are elegiac, what dominates is her mesmerising voice, that of an aristocratic femme fatale, which calibrates the intensity of her nocturnal sermons, always poised between hushed acoustic litanies and vibrant electric torsions, in a sort of dreamlike seesaw between spectral lethargy and sudden emotional climaxes. Over the course of her career, this repertoire has grown ever more mature and versatile, helped along by some fortunate collaborations, such as the 2018 one with the Swedish band Sällskapet.

The Ghosts of Berlin

Born and raised in eastern Westphalia, Andrea Schroeder trained as a graphic designer after finishing high school. She then began working as a model. Alongside this, she started out as a singer, first taking classical singing lessons, then devoting herself to gospel. "I really liked Cecilia Bartoli and Maria Callas, and Donizetti was my favourite composer," she told OndaRock, "while as far as rock goes, I particularly admired Nick Cave, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, artists for whom the lyrics are a crucial part of their work. I felt a strong need to completely free my voice, and for that reason I moved on to singing gospel music, learning to use my voice in all its expressiveness and all its power."

She also began writing her own songs. In 2007 she posted some of them on her MySpace page, already building up a small community of fans. At first she favoured chamber-folk settings, then — following in the footsteps of her muse Nico — she started playing the harmonium and turned towards darker, more melancholy atmospheres. But it would take another five years before her debut album appeared.

In the meantime, Andrea spent a few years living in Copenhagen — where she met Danish guitarist and composer Jesper Lehmkuhl, who would prove crucial to her artistic evolution — until in 2011 she settled permanently in Berlin, the symbolic city of the Cold War, which would become not only her home base but also the main inspiration for her work.

Poems in Black and White

Released by the German independent label Glitterhouse and produced by Chris Eckman (Walkabouts), Blackbird (2012) came to life right in Berlin's Wedding district, an old working-class neighbourhood. Andrea writes the lyrics, while Lehmkuhl, on guitar, composes splendid melodies built from just a handful of chords. The result is a record that gives off an energy that's hard to resist, so much so that it almost feels like reliving the glory days of the Patti Smith/Lenny Kaye duo. "Bebop Blues" and "Blackberry Wine" are the tracks that come closest to that reference to the high priestess of rock, and they're also the album's most electric moments, where Andrea's dark, aching voice rises above a sonic fabric made of scratchy guitars and pulsing bass. More often, though, the tension stays coiled, just beneath the skin, ready to explode into impetuous crescendos, as on the nocturnal "Dark Nightingales".

Few embellishments are needed: a filigree guitar, brushed drums to lend pathos and solemnity to a voice capable of radiating sadness and sweetness at once. Just listen to an irresistibly melancholy ballad like "Winter Days" to believe it.

Eckman's production stands out for its balance and refinement, managing to showcase both the minimal arrangements on one hand, and the power and intensity of Schroeder's voice on the other. The addition of strings, meanwhile, lends the record an even more enveloping, melancholy atmosphere, close to the noirest episodes of Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen.

Black-and-white litanies like "Paint It Blue" (with a melody and a string crescendo that could break your heart), "Wrap Me In Your Arms" and "Blackbird" sound as if they could have come straight off Marianne Faithfull's "Before The Poison" (whose songs, as it happens, were written by PJ Harvey and Nick Cave), while "Death Is Waiting" is an aching country-folk ballad dominated by the harshness of its lyrics, dark and apocalyptic, which follow one another like a kind of noir chant from start to finish of the track ("Death is waiting, round the corner, death is waiting just for me, death is waiting, round the corner, and it comes to set me free").

The solemnity of “Kälte” closes the album, almost a tribute to Nico, the quintessential dark lady: a track sung in German for voice and harmonium alone, closed out by a snare drum marching to a bolero rhythm.

Charged with electricity, tense and sinister, the folk-noir of Blackbird lays the groundwork for the German poet's musical career, still very much tied here to her lyrical, elegiac fascinations, but already fully aware of her potential as a nocturnal, fatal chanteuse.

Inside the Wild Ocean

Two years later came Where The Wild Oceans End (2014), another dive into the past. A past suspended between the retro atmosphere of 1930s Berlin and the decadent, blurred one of the 1970s. Recorded at the legendary Hansa Studios, where masterpieces such as Low and Heroes by Bowie came to life, the album again sees Jesper Lehmkuhl as co-writer of the songs (alongside Schroeder herself) with Chris Eckman at the production helm. And it's precisely the synergy between these three artists that proves to be the winning card of the German poet's second record. A more compact, cohesive work that also reflects the band's energy and strong unity. Compared to the previous record, handled entirely by the Lehmkuhl/Schroeder duo, every musician was more involved in composing the songs this time, benefiting the final sound of the album, a wild ocean of devastating beauty and decadent poetry.

While the themes of the debut were more intimate and, in some ways, more romantic, Where The Wild Oceans End is a record openly influenced by Berlin's magical atmosphere: “Berlin,” Schroeder herself admits, “is a city in constant flux, where history, ruins and memories intersect with modernity. A real, genuine city where people speak to you honestly, with no need to hide behind a mask.”

Once again, the compositional quality of every track on the record is striking. A fact that almost runs counter to today's market logic, increasingly focused on selling a single track or on streaming consumption. Where The Wild Oceans End is a work of art in the same way a sculpture is. An old-school record, recorded entirely on analogue equipment. The result is a journey through melancholy atmospheres carrying the same pathos as those evoked by artists like Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith and Nico.

Andrea's deep, charismatic voice dominates the scene, wrapping a sonic fabric of hypnotic arpeggios, electric distortion and violin swells in sublime dark lyricism, enveloping us track after track. Spectral and relentless, the opening track “Dead Man’s Eyes” pins the listener down with its piercing arpeggios and Schroeder's haughty, sinister singing. Almost an instant classic of 21st-century neo-cabaret. The subtle dark tension running through the whole record condenses in the electrified crescendo of the shadowy (and splendid) title track, in the anguished blues liturgy of “The Spider” and in the explosive rock outburst of “Rattlesnake”.

But the softer moments work just as beautifully, like the melancholy “Ghosts Of Berlin”, which, gliding gracefully on the wings of a violin, turns the angels over Berlin of Wim Wenders into ghosts, or the other funereal ballad “Until The End”, where Schroeder's sobbing vocal seems to transport the Doors' nearly homonymous historic mantra into a crumbling Weimar Republic nightclub or an old, deconsecrated Central European cathedral.

Among the ten songs on the tracklist, special mention goes to “Helden”, a fascinating German-language reinterpretation of David Bowie's epoch-defining Heroes: she passes this difficult test with flying colors, and the resulting version is so deep and powerful that it ends up sounding like a composition of Schroeder's own.

Where The Wild Oceans End earns more than a passing glance in the critics' choices for 2014 (starting with our own webzine) and establishes Schroeder as a leading artist on the international rock scene. The German press, too, finally starts to embrace its new muse, venturing into unwieldy comparisons with artists like Nico, Patti Smith and Marlene Dietrich. But the truth is that Andrea Schroeder doesn't need comparisons to assert her art, so personal, recognizable and by now fully blossomed is it. An aesthetic trademark that also shows in how she handles graphics, artwork and tour posters.

The acclaim earned by her second record allows the German artist to embark on a European tour and to take part in “The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Session Project Axels and Sockets” (2014), a tribute album for Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club, alongside such prestigious names as Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Debbie Harry and Mark Lanegan.

A Metallic Void

Two years later, again on Glitterhouse, comes the third album Void (2016), recorded between Berlin and Stockholm and made up of eleven tracks. The music is once again credited to the Schroeder/Lehmkuhl duo. The German singer, meanwhile, writes almost all the lyrics on the record, with the exception of two poems: “Was Poe Afraid” by Charles Plymell and “Black Sky”, by underground poet Rob Plath, which in this case are transformed into two gorgeous, melancholy ballads with noir shades reminiscent of Nick Cave. Lending further support to the project are a couple of guest stars: Kristoph Hahn (Swans) and Pelle Ossler (Thåström; Sällskapet).

“Pray to the God, pray to the Devil, whatever you share, it all goes down, in the void”. With these words, declaimed to the relentless, savage pulse of the drums, as if it were a dance in the dark, the title track opens the record. And from the very first notes of the album, we immediately sense that the atmosphere has grown darker compared to the two previous works, partly thanks to production duties handed to Ulf Ivarsson and Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey), who steered the sound down a wilder path. Acoustic concessions are few and far between, and the sound overall is harder and more alienating.

What benefits most from this is precisely the flexibility of Schroeder's voice, powerful and refined at once, proving she has gained a deep awareness of her own expressive means, with its deep tones and its cold, aristocratic composure. Nostalgics for the “Factory Epoque” will just have to come to terms with it, but frankly, by 2016, the comparison with Nico no longer holds up. Just listen to tracks like “My Skin Is Like A Fire” and “Kingdom”, where the German poet's voice sounds like that of a gothic priestess who, torch in hand, leads us inexorably toward the depths of despair as she sings “Deep inside there is sadness, there is wilderness and pain, when the sweet river flows my skin is like a fire”, almost like some kind of cathartic mantra. The instrumental section acts as a counterpoint to this immense emotional power.

In the martial “Burden” – featuring Swans guitarist Kristof Hahn as a special guest – the atmosphere turns colder still and the sound more industrial, with absolutely spectacular results. The solid, hammering rhythm section, courtesy of Maurizio Vitale on drums and Dave Allen on bass, the distorted, scraping dissonances of Jesper Lehmkuhl's guitar, and the vibrations of Mike Strauss's hammond organ, all work together like the engine of a locomotive travelling, track after track, toward the heart of darkness.

The album draws us in and moves forward relentlessly. There are few concessions to intimate, reflective moments, as in the case of “Little Girl”, a melancholy ballad whispered with Teutonic gravity in the stillness of the night, which, through the sad story of a refugee, aims to expose the tragedy of those fleeing war. Just when all hope seems lost, the violin of an angel named Catherine Graindorge steps in to lead us back toward finally more serene, dreamlike horizons with the album's beautiful closing track, the tender “Endless Sea”.

“Creatures” recalls certain moments of the noir-est Marianne Faithfull (that of “Before The Poison”), and “Don't Wake Me” is, perhaps, the only concession to the softer atmospheres of the previous album, but it remains an isolated case.

Lean and blazing, Void only confirms Andrea Schroeder as one of the finest performers around: a record painted in decadent hues, like an autumn longing to turn into winter.

A year later, Schroeder takes part in Mick Harvey's “Intoxicated Women” compilation, delivering three stunning performances: the unsettling “Striptease”, the German-language version of Serge Gainsbourg's famously sensual ode “Je t'aime… moi non plus” (“Ich Liebe Dich… Ich Dich Auch Nicht”), and “God Smokes Havanas (Dieu Est un Fumeur de Havanes)”, written by the Bad Seed himself together with the French songwriter.

Industrial priestess

Adding to Andrea Schroeder's contribution to the music of the new millennium, 2018 brings her collaboration with Swedish rock band Sällskapet. The result, Disparition, is one of the finest ambient/industrial releases of recent years. The metallic clangs of the Swedish trio – made up of Pelle Ossler, Niklas Hellberg and Joakim Thåström – are joined by the warm, penetrating voice of the German poet, a perfect counterpoint to the band's industrial sound. It almost feels like stepping back into the glorious retro atmospheres of much of the music made between the late Seventies and early Eighties. The musical references are many: starting with the sounds of kraut-rock (Kraftwerk and Neu! above all), through to Bowie's Berlin trilogy; from the post-punk of Einstürzende Neubauten and Swans to the hammering, icy beat of certain new wave/electronic music of the early Eighties (Human League, New Order, Depeche Mode). It's no coincidence that the album was mixed by Michael Ilbert at Hansa Studios in Berlin, and the sound benefits enormously from it. Everything is extremely well calibrated, the musicians sound as if they've been playing together forever, and the final result is genuinely surprising.

The images conjured up by this blend of influences are decadent, slightly blurred and steeped in melancholy. It's as if we were walking through a park on a rainy day and caught our faint reflection in a puddle. Disparition, in the end, could well serve as the perfect soundtrack for a David Lynch or Wim Wenders film.

Nine tracks in all, with Schroeder singing in German on eight of them.

The title track “Disparition” (included here in two magnificent versions) is spectacular, with Andrea's harmonious vocals grafted onto a seething electronic magma of synths and clangs, for a thoroughly successful cold fusion of industrial and noir songwriting. “Morgenlicht”, which also spawned a stunning video, moves through a wall of sound built from a drum machine pulsing relentlessly like a locomotive, the icy, cutting guitar of Pelle Ossler (already a collaborator of Schroeder's on 2016's “Void”), and the warm, enveloping sound of an analogue synth. Rising above this wall is Andrea's solemn, deep voice, singing with such power and beauty that it leaves us spellbound.

“Westerplatte” is another track with very strong overtones, opened by a guitar sound that cuts like a blade while, from the back, the hammering rhythm of a drum beats menacingly like the tread of marching soldiers' boots. The track, of course, evokes the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, and the disorienting sound, growing ever more intense, underscores its tragedy: it's as if we were living through a nightmare in the dark of night in a haunted forest.

“L'autostrada” (here the nod to Kraftwerk is obvious) pairs the German poet's voice with that of Joakim Thåström. The track starts strong, a sort of hypnotic, industrial-tinged dance performed on high-voltage wires, with Schroeder's solemn, enigmatic voice once again conjuring the ghost of Nico. The drums sound like a hammer pounding steel pipes, while the guitars strike a dark, cutting tone amid the analogue sparks thrown off by the synthesizers.

The pairing of “Waltzer” and “Die Zeit Vergeht” marks a return to more intimate atmospheres, painting frescoes tinged with winter dew that range from the most heart-wrenching Leonard Cohen to the dark depths of Nick Cave and Blixa Bargeld. Schroeder sings like a melancholy chansonnier, with more than a few affinities to certain moments on her own albums. “Tiefenraush” is a small dark-tinged gem (the reference points here being Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil and the electronic suites of Bowie's “Low”): the track opens with an intro built from a bed of electronic effects, vintage synth strings and guitars that ring out like blades. Schroeder's reverb-laden voice enters gradually, intoning a chorus of despair and sadness, as if wanting to declare the state of decay into which our society has plunged. A twilight devoid of hope.

With Disparition, Sällskapet have crafted a dark noir fresco rich in decadent suggestions, enhanced by an Andrea Schroeder in a state of grace, singing as beautifully as ever.

While we wait for the German singer-songwriter's next solo efforts, all that's left is to hope she finally gets the recognition she deserves and that her following grows, perhaps paving the way for a European tour that might even make its way to Italy. As for us – we can already say for certain – we'll be there.

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