Wildbirds & Peacedrums – The Snake

Wildbirds & Peacedrums - The Snake

Wildbirds and Peacedrums – The Snake
 

7/10

After releasing their debut album, Heartland, through Yorkshire’s own The Leaf Label to widespread acclaim in 2007, Swedish husband-and-wife duo Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin jumped straight in at the deep end with a follow up the next year. Their sound is raw, primitive; there is nothing of The White Stripes here. Maintaining the stripped-down feel of Heartland, second album The Snake builds evermore layers of complexity onto the basic vocals and percussion set-up, bringing in glockenspiel, marimba, flute and hosts of other tinking, twinkling other-worldly sounds. The landscape of The Snake is a frenetic and turbulent one, with Wallentin’s vocals meandering deftly through a veritable helter-skelter of styles and octaves; one moment her voice is as deep and powerful as Nina Simone’s, or a jazzier PJ Harvey; the next, it takes on a fragile tone more akin to the fragile warbles of Anthony Hegarty or Baby Dee. All the while Werliin’s ‘peacedrums’ are pounding rhythmically in the background, tribal and animalistic, as Wallentin guides us through their fairy tale wilderness. Live, they are a sight to behold, with shrieks and smashes melding together in a crashing chaos of complexity.

First single ‘There is no Light’ is a prime example of this controlled chaos, an anguished, churning mess of a song; but these raucous numbers are punctuated by slower, delicate tracks such as ‘So Soft So Pink’, which sounds exactly as one would expect from the name, with soft drums and tinkling cymbal crashes built around vocals as understated and brittle as glass.

Listening to the album, you get the impression that vocals and drums are each telling their own, distinct stories throughout, stories which complement and interlace with each other but which are individual narratives, each with their own directions. It is this complimenting of two different narratives and their interdependence that is so powerful, something which they seem acutely aware of themselves; in wrenching album closer ‘My Heart’, Wallentin’s yearning cries of “you see I’m lost without your rhythm” cannot help but be taken as a passionate and inspired homage to her band mate and husband, Werliin. This is music built around the ampersand of their band name; they are very much two discrete parts, but each without the other is lost.

Also over at Leeds Music Scene.

Florence & the Machine – Lungs

Florence & the Machine - Lungs

Florence and the Machine – Lungs

8/10

London-born Florence Welsh is the fiery-haired, charismatically-voiced songstress behind Florence And The Machine, a band much lauded by such giants as BBC Introducing and The Guardian even before the release of debut album, ‘Lungs’. After so much build up it is interesting to see whether the album can live up to the hype, and on first listen it certainly seems to; indeed, ‘Lungs’ has even landed Welsh with a much-coveted Mercury Music Prize nomination.

On second listen, the hype seems even further justified. Florence’s strong, soulful voice interweaves throughout the type of artsy, gothic-tinged folk pop recently championed by Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes, and indeed the aesthetic has a similar, theatrically whimsical and glitzy feel, as though Kate Bush has just run head-first through a forest and then plunged onwards through a cloud of glitter. The songs of Florence And The Machine, though, are punchier and not quite as ethereal and downbeat as Bat for Lashes’ offerings; indeed, first single ‘Kiss with a Fist’ has a bluesy, gritty feel, its upbeat tone belying the lyrical content as the vocals take on a harsher, PJ-Harvey-esque sound and she screams about an abusive relationship (“You hit me once/I hit you back/You gave a kick/I gave a slap/You smashed a plate over my head/Then I set fire to our bed.”)

Highlights of the album include the glorious ‘Howl,’ where aching vocals entwine with soaring strings as the lyrics echo the vocal delivery (“Like some child possessed/the beast howls in my breast”) as Florence’s forlorn wails remind us of the pain and desire of love, and the insistent ‘Drumming’ which crashes and pounds its way into an elated crescendo (“It fills my head up and gets louder and louder.”) No tracks, though, could be described as ‘filler,’ and if some of the more downbeat tracks such as the crooning ‘I’m Not Calling You a Liar’ and the creepy ‘Girl With One Eye’ seem perhaps a little flatter and less involving than other tracks, it is a minor quibble. The album ends on a slightly unusual note with an adept cover of The Source’s classic dance-track ‘You Got the Love,’ for me, it is more a satisfactory climax to the album than a blinding one, but doesn’t detract from the beauty of what has come before.

Also over at Leeds Music Scene.