I got to know Anton Barbeau's new album Berliner Grotesk at a single sitting, almost without realising it early the other morning. It's a highly listenable record that slots impeccably within a particular tradition. That of Brecht and Weil, Brel, Gainsbourg, Scott Walker, Bowie, Eno, Cave, Hitchcock and Haines.
Arch, bordering on camp, Barbeau adopts a persona from the opening note and maintains it for the course of the record. It's a 'seen it all, done it all' fin de siecle pout, though it's all good spirited, never plunging towards darkness as Cave and Walker do, and you get the sense his tongue is very firmly in his cheek throughout.
Barbeau is from Sacramento, California, though you wouldn't know it. Like Walker, the tone he takes is resolutely European and he pulls off the conceit with considerable elan. The eleven vignettes on Berliner Grotesk pass by in the blink of the eye. This is defiantly cult stuff, for those with particular tastes and Barbeau caters for them impeccably.
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