Track Of The Day: Soho Rezanejad – ‘Half The Shore’

Uncompromising is a word that’s used to describe a number of musicians, but rarely does it seem truer than with Danish artist, composer and playwright Soho Rezanejad. Digging through her back-catalogue, both under her own name and that of her alter-ego, Angeles, is like uncovering a series of art installations crossed with epic movie soundtracks – as daunting, impressive and overpowering as a mountain range.

Born in New York City before growing up in Copenhagen, Rezanejad seems to carry all manner of influences in her work to date – from the synth orchestrals of Vangelis, the no-quarter given vocals of Nico, and the industrial, goth and post-punk sounds of various British acts of the 1980s. That sense of movement and diverse influences is also reflected in her latest album Perform and Surrender – to be released by the artist’s own Silicone Records in December – which results from a series of performances in Copenhagen, Vienna, Helsingør, Munich, Montreal, Toronto, St. Petersburg, Tromsø and Nantes across 2018 and 2019.

‘Half The Shore’, taken from Perform and Surrender, actually offers a notable change from Rezanejad’s previous work. Opening with a minute of strummed guitar, and gently picked notes that echo in an alt.country style, this is a far more approachable piece than perhaps anything Rezanejad has released before. The voice that follows is shot through with a raw balladic quality.

“Love without trust is a river without water”, she sings, “so don’t leave me”. In a sense, this is old in style and emotion, made new; an artist seeking a brave new front in more antiquated fashions. According to Rezanejad herself, the album was taken from “small scores, bits of stage direction, with performances special to each…” As this suggests, there is the hint of something slightly off-the-cuff to ‘Half The Shore’, not least in the vocalising that teems through the track’s instrumentation like sunlight through mist, around the 2 minute 40 mark. That said, and despite a sensibility that it is perhaps more organic than many of the songs on Rezanejad’s previous LPs, there is still a story being told here, and this is still a soundtrack, of sorts. “I lost someone very dear to me at the time” says Soho Rezanejad of the creation of Perform and Surrender, “All things…resembled a testimony of life and death”. 

An album that is bathed in the rumination that follows loss, ‘Half The Shore’ is one of two tracks that prominently feature strings – the other is the preceding track, ‘Absence’, a violin-led elegy – and both sit at the album’s centre. Nature too, is hidden in spaces within the tracks: the songs of birds appear just at the close of ‘Half The Shore’ as it segues into ‘Hera’, for one example, quite literally dovetailing with but also acting in optimistic opposition to the album’s recurring aspect of mourning.

And what of that title too, just what is ‘Half The Shore’. Evoking images of cliffs crumbling and land being part-swallowed by the sea, the cataclysm that is ongoing but not completed. And yet in the phrase too is optimism – a sense of returning to land, a glimpse of something firm to come back to. You get the impression that, with Soho Rezanejad, there are no obvious or easy answers.

 

Perform And Surrender, the upcoming album from Soho Rezanejad, is out 4th December via Silicone Records.

John McGovern
@etinsuburbiaego

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LISTEN: Susanna – ‘The Dancing Snake’

In a stunning and sorrowfully emotional unfolding it seems unjust to describe ‘The Dancing Snake’ the latest offering from Norwegian artist Susanna, as anything but a treasure.

Inspirited by the ghost of the late poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), Susanna brings the cynical gaze of a wandering civilian reflecting upon the universe around him to her majestic songwriting. With a captivating performance of dark, velvet-like piano, ‘The Dancing Snake’ and its shivering essence seems to rotate through the soreness of Baudelaire’s historic perspective.

Floating above the instrumental, Susanna’s voice emerges ‘The Dancing Snake’ to move in modern times with a fluttering vocal dreamscape that is anchored to the earth by its ringing chords and escapist lyrical content. Images from “I breathe the tang of the ocean / in the deeps of your hair”, to “my dreaming soul casts off and sets its course for distant skies”, take Susanna’s listeners on this strange fantastical journey where they are whisked away to hear the harmonious marriage between immaculate musicianship and storytelling.

‘The Dancing Snake’ is a skeletal arrangement of a tune that needs no more than itself. With early influences, from the earnest Bob Dylan to the more contemporary Mothers, Susanna has thrown her work into a blender – derived only from the best of folk, classical and art – and created an exquisite soundscape. ‘The Dancing Snake’ is an exhibition in itself, of impressionism and the pondering experience of being alive.

Baudelaire & Piano, the upcoming album from Susanna, is set for release 11th September via SusannaSonata.

Jill Goyeau
@jillybxxn

Photo Credit: Martin Rustad Johansen

 

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PREMIERE: Kama Vardi – ‘These Days’

Having spent a nomadic youth travelling, experimenting and creating, Tel Aviv based artist Kama Vardi has released a stream of solo material to much acclaim, and has now announced a brand new album, set for release this Autumn.

Taken from the album, new single ‘These Days’ may be a cover of the Nico classic, but it showcases Vardi’s unique sparkling majesty. Maintaining all the beguiling allure of the original, this rendition oozes a captivating mysticism as the shimmering splendour of Vardi’s distinctive vocals and the gentle lilting melodies create a soothing, poignant lullaby. A strikingly beautiful moment of much-needed tranquility at a time when we need it the most.

Of the decision to cover ‘These Days’, Vardi explains:

“‘These Days’ – no longer a gambler, a talker, a lover. It is a song of a woman who had great adventures that left her standing humble, wide eyed and weary in front of the rest of her life, a feeling I was familiar with from a young age.”

Filmed at a small countryside studio in the middle of nowhere, watch the charmingly comforting video for ‘These Days’ now:

Moonticket, the upcoming album from Kama Vardi, is out 27th November via Bread For Eskimos Records.

Mari Lane
@marimindles

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ALBUM: Girl Friday – ‘Androgynous Mary’

Hardly Art are hardly novices at breaking new bands – the label gave early releases to the likes of Tacocat, La Luz, Shannon & The Clams and Colleen Green, amongst many others – but for LA four-piece Girl Friday, this debut album release on the label reflects a massive step forward for a band after just two EPs, which were self-released. But equally, for a group with this diversity of influence, and this originality of expression, perhaps it’s not so surprising that they’re hosting the band’s new album Androgynous Mary. 

The group came together via a chance encounter when guitarist Vera met bassist Libby at a friend’s house, at UCLA. Impressed by Libby’s particular style of playing bass – the Peter Hook merged with Kim Deal style of which certainly informs the ten tracks on Androgynous Mary. Vera introduced herself and the pair began making music together, bringing in additional guitarist Sierra and drummer Virginia through friends of friends.

What really marks the group out is their refusal to pigeon-hole themselves, generically, with this LP displaying flashes of surf-rock, garage, post-punk, goth, art-rock and pop-punk. And, although the foursome certainly have a broadly feminist identity, this is no mere political screed. Rather, it’s a collage of sounds and ideas from their time together, as informed by “parking lot murals” as the SCUM Manifesto, in a way not dissimilar to Girl Friday’s  hero, Courtney Love.

Album opener, ‘This Is Not the Indie Rock I Signed Up For’, is a case-in-point. It’s initially a gentle lead-in that shows off Girl Friday’s gorgeous vocal harmonies and soaring guitar lines, all contained in a mid-tempo post-punk ballad. But, in perhaps a meta callback to its title, the song falls apart into a free-form breakdown a few minutes in, before returning to its original style.

Second track and the album’s lead single, ‘Amber’s Knees: A Matter of Concern’ is built around a choppy, spikey slice of lo-fi indie-punk guitar.  Described by the group as a consideration of “the borders of culturally sanctioned dissociation and the wilful ignorance we often employ to keep things functioning”, its juxtaposition of post-punk and lyrical density gives it a substantial atmosphere that belies the accessibility of its sound. This is also true to some extent with ‘Eaten Things’, which veers more towards a gloomy, grunge sludge bass-led sound, and thumping percussion – “I want to eat you up” goes its chorus, before a grim sounding middle eight that sounds epically gothic.  

Lyrically, ‘Public Bodies’ is a return to the observational nature of the first two tracks, whilst sonically shifting the album into Allo Darlin’ style melancholic indie-pop. Musing on mainstream rejection, isolation and the inaccessibility of healthcare in the USA (that’s one interpretation), it uses images of religion and bodies consumed by capitalist machinery, stating “…if you want your independence, then you trade your health for cash”. The song closes with a Goo-era Sonic Youth style coda, underlining the band’s ability to re-construct their songs, seemingly on the spur of the moment, like an act of collective will. This is also true of what follows in ‘What We Do It For’ – opening with 90 seconds of post-punk instrumental led by spectral guitars (not far from the early days of Interpol), leading to a middle section of balladic harmonies, and closing with a flurry of guitars and drums; it’s like three different songs beautifully crashing into each other.  

‘Earthquake’ is a more immediate, Runaways style garage banger, replete with a shouty chorus which, somewhat appropriately, leads to an emotional shift in the album. ‘Clotting’ contains soft vocalisations and more personally emotive lyrics, not dissimilar to Sleater Kinney’s quieter work, whilst ‘Gold Stars’ is a mid-tempo grunge tale of an unwanted relationship (“I said leave, but you heard love”), underscored by Libby’s bass melodies. 

Closers ‘Favourite Friend’ and ‘I Hope Jason Is Happy’ form a dovetailing pair, sharing a stadium-filling guitar line that shines throughout both – “My head doesn’t fit the crown, does it matter anymore?” opens the lyrics on the mournful former, and the track slowly grows in intensity, dropping away to leave only the sustained guitar lead-in to the LP’s closer. Over a marching drum beat and fuzzy guitars, Girl Friday’s four members sing “My head is on your chest / In the end I’ll be happy if you do your best / You’ve got to fight to keep your breath in this world” and, with that, it finishes.

Precocious, without being naïve, and intelligent, without being pretentious, Girl Friday have crafted a debut that is no mere polemic, but allows imagist lyrics and inventive song-craft to create a palpable sense of character for the listener to lean into. It cuts a slice through influences, that stretch from the early ’70s, up to the present day – sifting, magpie-like, through the works of The Breeders, The Slits, Girlpool, Placebo, and (perhaps unconsciously) the C86 movement. Throughout, that bass sound flows, like a dark river, stretching a taut string across ten tracks, that each ring with their own distinct power. In short, Girl Friday have constructed a debut that’s suitable for all the days of the week.

Androgynous Mary is out 21st August via Hardly Art. Pre-order here.

John McGovern
@etinsuburbiaego

Photo Credit: Al Kalyk

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