ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF - "Iconoclasts" Album Review
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In the last decade, composer, singer, producer and organist Anna von Hausswolff has cemented her name across many music genres, be it drone, art-rock, neo-folk, or celestial mysticism. "Iconoclasts" is her sixth studio album. With this record, she not only re-shapes the kind of gigantic and sacred surrealism she created with her mostly goth "Dead Magic" in 2018, but she aims to further own that space through spiritual maximalism, baroque theatrics, and an open and grandiose sense of cinematic space. This is an album that thrives on tension and intensity. Most of the songs in this ensemble feel like a pressure cooker ready to go off any minute. Despite that, the magnificence of this work lies with her willingness to patiently linger over the songs, giving them time and space to develop into sonic euphoria and occasional layers of unhinged saxophone. Every progression is instrumental to each structure, and every crescendo is accomplished with razor-sharp precision. Sandsjö is everywhere on Iconoclasts, his sax leads "Struggle with the Beast" and "Consensual Neglect", with arrangements that would at first seem crazed and deranged, but that mirror and complement the rhythm of the tribal drums to perfection. There is a wild ritualistic component to "Struggle With The Beast". It's almost hypnotising in a religious and terrifying way, like an alluring and seductive tango with the devil, although no more devil references are allowed in this particular case! We wouldn't want any more of her shows cancelled because of satanic allegations. What is even a satanic sounding song in the first place? Probably everything this song is, oh no. Although the way it transitions to the heavenly doors of "An Ocean Of Time" with such ethereal grace should hopefully absolve her and us all. Despite the sax powering "Struggle With The Beast" for several minutes and becoming its driving force, I couldn’t describe its contributions as solely dominating: there’s too much else going on. What really defines the success of this song in the end is its production, the way all this powerful elements come together, simulating a sort of universal call, in which the listener can't help but succumb. it's existential doom transmuting heaviness into astral and immaterial lightness. This concept is taken to its absolute pinnacle in the title song "The Iconoclast", in which von Hausswolff explores themes of emotional detachment, guilt, and transcendental rebirth. Alone on her iron throne, she feels the weight of time passing and the irreversible and impending fear of growing old. Mundane-sized things are built to reach towering proportions in sky-high productions. "The Iconoclast" feels like a triumphant requiem for expired old selves. This record presents heavy synthesised drones and the glitterbeat stamp of glam that occasionally evoke the sound of Kite (The Swedish duo she collaborated with on different occasions), and orchestrations of tribal ritualistic noise that remind me of the 2014 Swans "To Be Kind". Speaking of collaborations, Iggy Pop and Ethel Cain are both featured on this album, with "The Whole Woman" and "Aging Young Women" respectively. The former is a Velvet Underground-esque ballad in which her Kate Bush-like vocals mesh perfectly with Iggy's deep, unsettling baritone crooning. The latter also shows undeniable chemistry between Anna and Ethel, without necessarily being a standout song. Iconoclasts is a marriage of opposites: sacred and spiritual discipline versus total abandon, bare minimalism versus sonic majesty, crude realism versus surrealist nightmare. it is theatrical and cinematic at once, which would seem theoretically incorrect since the first is supposed to give a sense of "enclosed space" and the second a sense of "open space". With this record, she once again proved to be the high priestess of emotional and aesthetic paradoxes.
SONG LIST: "The Beast" |
