Monika Enterprise
2006
The Grass Is Always Greener
About This Album
If Nichts Muss found Barbara Morgenstern shifting her style from indie electronic to techno-pop, her follow-up album, The Grass Is Always Greener, finds her embracing the pop aspect while backpedaling away from techno. These sorts of shifts have come to be expected from one Morgenstern album to the next, as she continually repositions herself stylistically. Yet over the course of her solo recording career, a single trajectory has been clear with each successive release: Morgenstern continues to move herself further into the spotlight, making her singing, piano playing, and songwriting the focus of her music, while steadily moving the electronics, once the emphasis of her music, into the background. As a result, she's become increasingly distinct, to the point where it's difficult to mistake her music, even her instrumentals, for that of anyone else. This in itself is an accomplishment, given the innumerable artists recording electronic music concurrently in Germany. Yet as distinct as it may be, The Grass Is Always Greener is a pop album: eight of the 12 songs are sung, with full-blown choruses, and practically all of them are driven by old-fashioned piano. As is customary for Morgenstern, the first third of the album is immediate -- gripping songs with strong hooks and melodies -- while the second two thirds drift between instrumentals and vocal tracks, the last third in particular meandering toward a moody finale.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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