Saturday, December 03, 2011

STN Albums Of The Year no.41: Sacred Harp - Window's A Fall

Oslo's Sacred Harp don't like to make things too slow. Yes, the pool they largely draw from is the considered ice floe textural somnambulance of Low, Red House Painters and Mew's calmer moments, but theirs is equally a cinematic scope and one which likes to throw the unwary off course. Jessica Sligter's voice is a more straightforwardly emotive Beth Gibbons-like in its spooked out torch song quality while her band know when to throw in a slow burn fanfare of something new - strings, synths, found sounds, a barnstorming Americana guitar riff - and when to turn on the lachrymosity. And then there's Red/Three, an ESG-like dance-post-punk interlude that I'm still not convinced isn't from a different album altogether.

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