7. Austra – ‘Feel It Break’ [Domino]
Singer Katie Austra Stelmanis has been around for a while – taking in opera, punk and singer-songwriteriness en route – but Austra is the end result of her “discovering bass“. And what a result it is. ‘Feel It Break‘ is ten tracks of dark, shimmering and occasionally booming electro-pop, plus one piano ballad right at the end, all of which is designed to be taken very very seriously, like proper 80s-style electro-pop should be. Like Cold Cave and a couple of others this year, the snark of irony is missing from this record, but instead of sinking under its own self-importance, it floats up to synthetic heights.
In part this is due to the lyrical sparsity. Stelmanis has said she doesn’t really see lyrics as vitally important, and at times she demonstrates this by stripping them out and using her excellent voice as an instrument, such as in ‘Lose It‘ where the looping melodies of the chorus sound like the Lloyds TSB adverts, but not as irritating or complicit in collapsing our economy. Having a truly great voice is something of a quirk in the electro-pop world, where bellowing in monotone is quite acceptable behaviour for both genders, and it’s to Stelmanis’s credit that she doesn’t go for OTT vocal theatrics at any point. That’s not to say there aren’t some lyrics worth listening to – the songs mostly seem to be about broken hearts, broken blood vessels (I’ve not heard an album which mentions blood and bleeding so often in a while), and abstract allusions to lewd acts with mysterious girls. Or sometimes not so abstract ones if ‘The Future‘ (“I came so hard in your mouth“) is anything to go by.
The discovery of bass certainly helps. At times it feels like the album is trying to shake the very foundations of the earth. ‘Beat And The Pulse‘ takes a military strut to The Knife’s Silent Shout, and comes up with one of the best singles released all year. ‘Darken Her Horse‘ meanwhile, takes a different approach by deploying Stelmanis’s voice to stentorian effect, swooping and soaring over a chorus which manages to be stirring, heartbreaking and sexy all at the same time. Having a real life drummer in Maya Postepski helps, her heavy beats bring a more human edge to things at times (‘The Villain‘) whereas at others they are mechanical and impersonal (the aforementioned ‘Beat And The Pulse‘). There’s not a massive amount of variation in pace throughout the album – the default is stately, but the last two tracks drop this down a gear or two further, in the case of ‘The Noise‘ even going so far as to melt down all the instruments, leaving Stelmanis swimming around in a soup of electronic fuzz rather than any discernible notes. It’s marvellous.
‘Feel It Break‘ may be an album which sticks to its own template closely but it is an excellent template to be getting on with. – Holly Cruise
