Anyone who listens to him learns a lot about the state of affairs in Switzerland. The St. Gallen singer and comedian Manuel Stahlberger entertains with thoughtful songs. His repertoire thrives on local freaks and outsiders.
Manuel Stahlberger plays with clear sentences and apt words.
“I work here!” Manuel Stahlberger invites a man into his studio through an old wooden door. The arms point into the dark room as if a secret needs to be revealed. There is actually little to see. He just cleaned up, says the 47-year-old from St. Gallen. That explains the emptiness on the large desk behind the window front, where Stahlberger now sits down in his swivel chair to turn to the guest.
In March, Manuel Stahlberger released a new album with the band that bears his last name: “Lüt uf Fotene.” Meanwhile, the work, rightly praised for its laconic lyrics and hypnotic post-punk and electro tracks, will be presented on a tour. A process has thus been completed and there is room for further projects. That’s why he made a clean sweep.
No braggart
A CD lies lonely on the desk, next to it rests a laptop. In the corner a copier sleeps like a dog. In the studio in a former workshop behind the St. Gallen main station there are also various lamps around: from small office lamps to a pseudo-baroque chandelier. But who needs artificial light when the sun is shining through the panes of glass on this early summer morning?
It gets so bright behind Stahlberger that he threatens to lose face in silhouette. That doesn’t bother him. He is not a phony, not a braggart. He refrains from grand gestures and facial expressions. He’s also not a man of big words – which may come as a surprise for a comedian and singer. It is precisely such surprises and irritations that fuel the cult surrounding this unusual St. Gallen pop star, whose understatement arouses respect and admiration.
He speaks about his art and his person with caution and thoughtfulness. He takes questions into his care in a friendly manner, thinks them over and then keeps the answers on a short leash so that he can always correct and expand them. The intonation oscillates between a mezzo forte and an uncertain piano, which is occasionally accompanied by the sparrows chirping in the alley outside.
The gaunt artist with the stubbly beard soon seems somehow familiar, as if they had met each other years ago – and then forgotten again in the hustle and bustle of the time. He could have stepped out of a Swiss novel: as a friendly beer drinker à la Bichsel or as the honest, melancholic idealist of a Hermann Burger story. Or as someone who questions his identity like a Max Frisch character.
I’m not Stahlberger; he doesn’t say that. The fact that someone like him – reserved and reasonable by nature – has ended up in vain pop of all places seems somehow alien to him. Stahlberger, however, stands by himself. He lives happily with his wife and two children, for whom he usually prepares lunch. And his success as a singer-songwriter and pop singer makes him happy, if not rich.
Stahlberger’s character is reminiscent of virtues that were once considered Swiss. For example, modesty. She’s breathing down his neck and always makes him a little smaller than he is with her malicious charm. This is evident when he talks about music. When Stahlberger talks about music, you realize how much it means to him. He praises colleagues like Kuno Lauener, Guz and Jochen Distelmeyer. And yet the music itself seems too complicated for him.
The band bears his name
In any case, the singer stubbornly tries to dispel any doubts about his musical incompetence. A musician by profession, he is unable to speak analytically about the art of sound. He can hardly make music either. Once enthusiastic about Mani Matter, he only learned “a few chords on the guitar”. Later he took lessons from a guitar teacher, but that didn’t help, he never got better – “obviously there’s a kind of disturbance in the brain”.
The confidence in his band Stahlberger, which once performed under the name St. Crisco in St. Gallen, is all the greater. Manuel Stahlberger later joined via detours. Having excelled in drawing in his youth, he wrote songs for a party for the first time when he was twenty. Somehow he got stuck on his dialect songs. He composed stanzas and verses and discovered his destiny in them.
His sense of language games and their staging paved his way into the cabaret and pop scene. As a singer-songwriter and comedian, he distinguished himself not only as a soloist – with appearances in “Deville” on Swiss television – but also alongside the sound inventor and device inventor Stefan Heuss. At some point he also worked with Christian Kesseli on a duo program. The guitarist then engaged his three bandmates as well, so St. Crisco became the Stahlberger quintet.
In 2009 the debut album «Rägebogesiedlig» was released. Since then, the five friends have been working on changing combinations of contemporary sounds and song lyrics in the St. Gallen dialect. Manuel Stahlberger feels comfortable in this language, it is more fresh in pop than, for example, the Bernese dialect. So far, the songs have mostly developed from the textual specifications. When he met his colleagues for the session, he brought “e Biigeli Text” with him. He collects the ideas that go through his head in everyday life in a notebook. As soon as it was full, he read it through, transcribed the best thoughts into a new one, and then burned the old one. Otherwise there is the danger of hanging on to any inspiration for too long.
The new album “Lüt uf Fotene” has a somewhat more special genesis. When the planned concerts were suddenly canceled due to the corona pandemic, the band used the time for new sessions. Stahlberger was not prepared this time. So for once the music was at the beginning: the melancholic melodies inspired him to write sad and depressing words.
Most of the time, Stahlberger’s music points manically into space, while the lyrics evoke an intimate parallel world. Despite this tension, formal analogies can also be recognized. The expansive tracks are made up of clear abbreviations and motifs. Condensed into shrill strands, they create a psychedelic pull that suggests long escapes.
Minimalism and reductionism also determine Stahlberger’s verses. His lyrics are not necessarily aligned with punchlines. Rather, they spread out like linguistic braids over existential abysses or over everyday doubts. Should you climb the Rigi or the Hoch-Ybrig? The question from the old song “Wanderwaetter” is just as typical of a Stahlberger song as the split in the personality in the new “Gar nöd i”, which does not bring your own “I” together with your social roles.
hidden feelings
Stahlberger often sings in the first person, and the songs are actually about personal experiences. “Hey to you”, the easy-going pop song from the new album, alludes to a relationship that once freed him from his youthful stubbornness. Elsewhere he sings “Do bin i dehei, do han i scho immer wöle wäg” – meaning the years he still had to spend in his parents’ house as an adolescent. Ultimately, however, it’s never about “letting your pants down”. He draws from his own life, and he relies on scenes and figures from his surroundings – again and again freaks, loners, outsiders – in order to express himself as precisely as possible.
Manuel Stahlberger is a virtuoso of laconicism, he has mastered the art of omission. But he wouldn’t say: I’m a good songwriter. He says: “It’s just extremely fun to write something like that.” In any case, he only finds artistic satisfaction when he intones the lyrics in his characteristic singsong. His voice seeks the boundary between speaking and singing in order to indicate a maximum of feelings with a minimum of sound, which are hidden behind the laconic.
On «Lüt uf Fotene» he has grown as a singer, but in the meantime he is able to develop more expressiveness than before in the development of the melodies. I’m getting better and better – Stahlberger doesn’t say that. But: “It’s just fun to meet Tön z. That’s mini chlii Freud as a pop star.”
Stahlberger concert: Zurich, Helsinki, June 11. – Manuel Stahlberger solo: “Own Shadow”, Wädenswil, Theater Ticino, 1.-3. June.