Sebastian Krämer

You don't know who's more to be pitied, the whiner or those he makes wet - while contemporary German pop is happy with the exaltation of emotions, Sebastian Krämer shifts to the opposite: exemplary composure as a fence around unprecedented abysses. Amused elegies (a genre that had to be invented specifically for this purpose) prove that bad things can be quite digestible - depending on how they are prepared.
The sources from which these somewhat different mood songs draw are dark. Dramatis personae: a doll in the garden, a sculpture by Barlach, the children of a purified witch on a public bus, a pug and a bee sting. What is reflected in the eyes of these figures, like the lights of passing vehicles at night, only reaches us as a dull premonition. Media catastrophes gather dust on the back burner; Krämer still worries himself. And, as befits worries, he has not yet come to terms with them. Beneath the surface of lilting melodies and elegant narratives smoulder disaster, grief, the lost, the futile. Hobbies: rummaging through cannibal cooking recipes and orchestrating old German exams.
Krämer is capricious in his commentaries and sweet to coarse in his songs. His musical vocabulary ranges from swing to Viennese school. And the more burlesque the façade, the more delicate the message. This is lamentation at a high level.