B-Side Guys

David Josephson left Stockholm for Berlin after declaring he would become Sweden’s Cohen, a statement his countrymen received with the appropriate skepticism. Berlin, city of wandering prophets and German expressionism, suited him better. Nervous City Nervous Self was born there, and “Berlin Blues” is the project at its most Berlin: a love song conducted entirely in missed sightings across the U-Bahn network, organized around a city that exists as both backdrop and accomplice.

The lyrics are a walking tour of near-misses. The narrator catches glimpses on the blue line, at KaDeWe, at Schlawinchen with a hat and a rabbit, each location a fresh opportunity for the same realization: too late, wrong moment, ach nein. The mixing of German phrases into otherwise English lyrics isn’t affectation. It’s how the city actually sounds to someone living in it at a slight remove from the language, where cherry wine and Tasse Tee and LKW all occupy the same emotional register.

The synthpop arrangement gives the melancholy a buoyancy it earns rather than fakes. “Whoever comes next, I’m sure they got the Berlin Blues” opens the grief outward into something collective, the specific indecisiveness of people who came to Berlin specifically to be indecisive together. That’s not a criticism. Josephson seems to understand it’s the whole point of the city.

The remix takes the original’s bittersweet momentum and sharpens the edges without losing the warmth, the production sitting somewhere between a late-night subway ride and a dance floor at 2am when the feeling hasn’t resolved yet and nobody’s ready to go home.