Night Mirror – Album Review

Former Propaganda vocalist Claudia Brücken has written a new chapter in electro-pop history with her fourth solo album. Night Mirror builds on her impressive track record while giving her sound a more eclectic feel. Robert Plummer goes with the flow.

Once controversially described as “Abba from Hell”, German 1980s synth-pop four-piece Propaganda have carved out a more interesting afterlife for themselves than their Swedish counterparts.

After all, Abba’s contribution to 21st Century culture has been more technological than musical, with their digitised selves promoting an album of sheer audio purgatory. Meanwhile, the one-time ZTT stalwarts have spun off into a series of fascinating fragments, of which former frontwoman Claudia Brücken’s new album is the latest example.

Detailing all the various projects that have ensued since the original Propaganda line-up ended in 1987 would require a whole Pete Frame family tree. But the 2020s have seen a renewed burst of activity, with the founding foursome lined up in two opposing camps.

Brücken and fellow singer Susanne Freytag made the first move, teaming up with original producer Steve Lipson as xPropaganda on a revived ZTT label in 2022. Two years later, Ralf Dörper and Michael Mertens returned under the original Propaganda name with a new female vocalist, Thunder Bae.

With a further xPropaganda album still possibly in the pipeline, Brücken has chosen to revive her sporadic solo career with the sleek, sophisticated Night Mirror. Opening with a burst of husky Sprechgesang, she makes it clear that she’s not prepared to be judged on her past. “My life started today,” she says, “what happened before just doesn’t matter.”

Of course, that’s the kind of valiant hope that just makes nostalgia the elephant in the room. As if acknowledging this, Brücken changes tack immediately with the ruminative Rosebud. “Far away behind a looking glass/Memories, new from the past,” she sings in perfectly enunciated, cut-glass tones.

Already we’re starting to hear a musical palette that brings warmth to the original permafrost Propaganda soundscape, with Hammond organ offsetting the clipped guitar riffs and circling sequencers. And the sonic thaw continues on subsequent songs, as classic chilled synth motifs coexist with rumbling rock guitar, pizzicato strings and even banjo parts.

The expansive sound is a product of Brücken’s collaboration with producer and co-writer John Williams. He has worked with her on previous solo ventures, as well as on records by artists including Blancmange and the Housemartins.

“The third time you fall, you get up again/And then you run, you’re faster than anyone,” begins Sound And The Fury. Resilience and romance run through this record, as Brücken explores the anguish of loving, losing and trying again. “As long as I keep letting go/Maybe there’ll be nothing left,” she lets slip on The Only Ones.

The tricks that memory plays on us all as we get older are part of the process too. “Funny the things I recall with clarity/The others I don’t remember at all,” she sighs. Her recollections include “all the tricks and turns/all the bruises and the constant burns” (hopefully metaphorical rather than real).

Acoustic guitars and flute flourishes adorn the confessional Sincerely, a downtempo excursion that wallows in its own lovesick languor. “All I know right now is that I’m missing you,” sings Brücken. But in another abrupt mood change, the next song sees her stepping out on the dancefloor with the strutting Shadow Dancer, going “where it’s always twilight”.

The album peaks with its penultimate tune, To Be Loved, as Brücken gets to the heart of the matter: that is, matters of the heart. Frustrated in her efforts to find an idyll for herself and her lover, she gradually withdraws from the vocal fray. After she bows out, more than two minutes before the end of the seven-minute track, the rest is stately instrumental.

The release of Night Mirror comes at a crucial juncture for Claudia Brücken. Three years ago, the UK chart success of xPropaganda’s album The Heart Is Strange catapulted her back into the limelight. Now, with any luck, she can build on that revived interest to strike big with this record: it certainly deserves to be her biggest solo work yet.

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You can find Claudia Brücken online at https://www.claudiabrucken.co.uk. She is also on X as @ClaudiaBrucken1 and on Instagram as @claudiabrucken.

All words by Robert Plummer. More writing by Robert can be found at his author’s archive. He is also on X as @robertp926.