TENDER ENDER - Black Swan

One of the most intriguing new names to emerge in recent months comes from Bern, Switzerland: released in late November 2025 under the moniker Tender Ender, the project conceals Thomas Schmidiger. "Black Swan" is a record some critics have dubbed doomsday pop, an apocalyptic, feverish undertaking in which the melodic and pianistic rigor of Elton John is steeped in dark-cabaret sounds worthy of Band Of Holy Joy. It's a blend of sounds and imagery that unfolds like an improbable collage referencing Nick Cave and Frank Sinatra ("At My Will"), without possessing either the former's sense of the sacred or the latter's vocal power. Underneath it all, the piano sketches out most of the harmonic interplay, at times almost impossibly complex ("Escape Myself"), more often deceptively simple and nearly pop ("Bright Day").

Ambitious and tightly constructed, "Black Swan" captures the apocalyptic, cinematic grandiloquence of David Lynch and throws it headlong into kitsch. The harrowing groove of "No Way Out" reshapes its electronics in the tormented "Float", drawing on those Mitteleuropean dark conventions that inspired generations of English musicians, from David Bowie to Depeche Mode.

The album is an almost surreal journey through an imaginary funfair long since abandoned ("The Wqave"), with instruments appearing and vanishing as if in a dream, or a nightmare ("Oh U Wizard"), before finally settling into the romantic, unhealthy folds of a piano ballad that wouldn't be out of place on an Anohni record ("No Better Place").

"Black Swan" is a record where everything is pushed to extremes: seductive and original, dark, brooding and, despite it all, enjoyable. The Swiss musician plays with notes with skilled mastery and awareness, letting small imperfections play a key role in shaping a record that is, in truth, impossible to pin down — an album that dissolves the boundary between beauty and devastation into a deadly embrace that is also a source of rebirth.

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24/03/2026