33 Single and Broke Teresa Bergman

33 Single and Broke

Teresa Bergman steht für jazzigen Folk-Pop, für einen poetischen Diskurs: verträumt, geschmeidig, melodiös und glitzernd, gefühlvoll beim Anrühren der zarten Saiten wie Seiten. Es steht der Text Pate für die Lebensumstände und Herausforderungen einer Frau mitten in der Eigenverantwortung – für sich und ihr Umfeld. Die Themen sind so einfach wie kompliziert, Auswege gibt es: ohne Ironie und Mitleid kann Kunst nicht bestehen

– wie in Swallow: Can a house be a home till you lay down a nest? But you’re just not hard-boiled, gotta run somewhere

Kann ein Haus ein Zuhause sein, wenn man nicht ein Nest baut? Denn du bist zwar verrührt, aber noch nicht hart gekocht, so bewege dich und gehe!

Teresa Bergman stands for jazzy folk-pop and for poetic discourse, dreamy, smooth, melodious and glittering, soulful when touching the delicate strings like pages. It is the text thereby godfather for the circumstances and challenges of a woman in the middle of the space of responsibility – for herself and her environment. The themes are so simple so complicated, ways out exist: with humor and irony, without irony and compassion, art cannot exist – as in Swallow:

Can a house be a home till you lay down a nest? For you’re scrambled but not yet hard-boiled, so move and go!

Or as in Collateral Damage: the ambivalence in affection, I hate you and I love you, that forces you to realize that the other person has only read around in you like a brochure.
You read me like a brochure You soaked me through and left me dry

Or as in So Many Men: all the men who are always ranting, suddenly they are standing next to you and seem like helpless boys to whom you first have to explain what they have to do or could imagine what there is to do, if only they knew what they really wanted.

The irony, or as here the humor, seems entirely with the narrator and runs through the tones.

For all the seriousness in the themes: the joy of living cannot and should not fade, let those go, yes fade, who embody self-importance in their lovemaking but cower and shrink when it matters, yes, become a child, so far – this not only stumbles the seriousness of the themes, but also the prospect of further encounters.

„I’m not in the mood for bullshit anymore,“ Teresa Bergman says with an open face and laughs. She is just more honest today than she used to be, with others, even with herself.

Some are so big, they can open up, Bergman takes this risk, she has a broad program and repertoire, in terms of musical ability and compositional idea, she raises her voice for what is close to her heart, her voice immediately becomes an instrument on which to experiment, intense and thoughtful, boundaries are tested, there is joking and laughter, the ballad becomes a warm heartfelt affair, the harmonic framework wants rhythmic lightness, each of the pieces creates a whole spectrum of new pieces,

I’m grateful for the day, it says in 33, Single & Broke, despite or just because every day resembles the opening of the „Pandora’s box“, this is a Song of Hope, a relentlessly opening song, a song that moves out of the state of Everything is Lost to the almost militant sentence : Monsters are made to feed – The whole range of her voice comes into play here.

„As usual brutally open. Good that she doesn’t lose her humor in all the pressure.“ (Ortrun Schütz in RBB)

And she becomes even more ruthless, even more open, even more clear. And you? You yourself have not become more honest, but more anxious and cautious. The ambivalence remains: between understanding and misunderstanding, and not infrequently the next challenge stands before you. How will it turn out this time. Will you continue to read in me like in an open book or that brochure that fits your outfit like I fit your luminaries?

If irony and compassion are the basic substances of art and communication, where will you go with all your open concerns and questions? How to make the best of it, if not as an icon of yourself, an art figure, a spectacle, stylized and disguised and withdrawn – a Back To The Roots?

In Bergman’s narrative, that would be a return to the folk sound, to the acoustic, to your own. To the Old Timer.

There, in Teresa Bergman’s video clips, is a Marie Antoinette with tousled hair, drinking beer and smoking a cigar, glamorously smiling to herself: do you want to tell me more of your stories, or do you want to remain a mystery to yourself? Just dream of building your nest, come home and brood your thoughts. Maybe you’ll also notice: how stirred and stirred all this seems, not to say: fortunately not yet hard boiled, go ahead and laugh. Laugh. With a wink, probably. In the costume of your operetta and opera.

The crew around Teresa Bergman keeps in top-class and precise form, so Bergman can exhaust the volume and breadth of her voice in all registers and, with this recording plus Apart, refer to an already successful complete work: and, finally, after two years of pandemic: go on tour and conquer the stages nationwide.

Move and go! Let’s go!