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Written in fRoots issue 383, May 2015

SIRI KARLSSON
The Lost Colony
Flora & Fauna FFCD41 (2015)

Most of the CDs I get for review fall into a genre. This doesn’t – not even into the genre of what Siri Karlsson did on their previous two albums in 2008 and 2011. These are people who making another album only when they’ve something new to say, and it really speaks to me. Magnificently.
     Cecilia Österholm plays nyckelharpa, Maria Arnqvist soprano sax and piano, and both sing. That would normally point to skilful instrumentals and some songs in the Swedish folk genre. But…
     The Lost Colony is a kaleidoscope of unexpectedness. Massed multitracked female vocals, chiming twin electric guitars, pounding drums, a moment of delicate nyckelharpa and sax duetting that morphs into screeching dark chaos of instruments and voices over pulsing rhythms and into a stately traditional-style 3/4 melody. And that’s only the first couple of tracks.
     It progresses through all kinds of ideas, hugeness and torn wildness, with in-drawing calm interludes and touches of a faded, red-plush mittel-European ballroom, making full use of guest musicians and the studio. Sometimes, particularly in the strong House Of Cat, with its close-up whispery lead vocal tracked by threatening backing vocals, music-box-clanking piano and abrasive strings, it would sit well on the shelf next to Leonard Cohen, and indeed Maria and Cecilia’s arranging and drummer Jari Haapalainen’s muscular, quirky, wide-thinking production is up there with the alluring oddness of Cohen’s debut album.
     As a taster, I’d have given you a link to a video they’ve done for the last track, but that does rather fall into a genre, mostly the one of creeping around in dark misty woods with face-paint. And, like a picture in a story-book, it leaves its memory-mark on the music. Perhaps that’s why that track, post-video-viewing, now seems to me less good than the others. For me a track works when it evokes mental pictures, and this music does that without the direction of video-visualisation.
     Perhaps some of the video expense could have been diverted to the CD pack, a break-in-the-post jewel-case with a single-sheet insert. Siri Karlsson’s previous releases have been notably inventive and appealing in their packaging; this one, so distinctive musically, deserves better. But the music speaks for itself, and the songs, where they have lyrics, are in English, so that’s probably enough – a veil of lack of further information adds to the enticing mystery. And the pictures.

     www.sirikarlsson.com

© 2015 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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