Anna von Hausswolff - Dead Magic

Avant Music News

The Guardian 80

(City Slang)

The organ is a strange and compelling instrument, its pedal board capable of moving the secular and religious alike. We hear it played in celebration, when new life begins and vows are made, and also at the end, in requiem for the dead. Little wonder, then, that gothic composers such as Sweden’s Anna von Hausswolff find themselves drawn to its power.

The Gothenburg-born musician has made the organ her primary tool in recent years, yoking its eerie timbre to a thrilling weave of drone and metal-inspired “funeral pop”. She’s been tight-lipped around the circumstances that have shaped her fourth album (and the first with the producer and SunO))) collaborator Randall Dunn). But given the brutally bleak poem by the late Swedish writer Walter Ljungquist she has cited in press materials, it’s safe to say this artist’s preoccupation with mortality is undisturbed, writ large across this ambitious five-song opus.

Drowned In Sound 50

Despite this, opener ‘The Truth, the Glow, the Fall’ eventually emerges from its chrysalis as a pop song… of sorts. It’s not entirely convincing: a song in sections that don’t entirely feel like they belong together. It works, ultimately, through sheer resolve. No little assistance comes from producer Randall Dunn (Wolves in the Throne Room, Sunn O))), Earth), who has helped this record sound suitably cavernous. This full-bodied sonic confidence is all well and good, but von Hausswolff’s songwriting is less confident than ever. If Ceremony sometimes wore the influence of Kate Bush a little too on the sleeve then moments of Dead Magic, like touches here and there on The Miraculous, do the same with Swans. ‘The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra’ could come directly off White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and the final third of the (16 minute) album centrepiece ‘Ugly and Vengeful’ uses crescendo in much the same manner as Michael Gira and company’s last three records.

There’s an undeniable temptation to heap praise on Dead Magic all the same. This is an album that could hardly be accused of not being good at what it does. Neither could one realistically say that the increased weight of these compositions doesn’t suit Von Hausswolff and her band in a certain way. Anyone who has seen a live performance by the group over the last three years will know that the approach of Dead Magic has been gradually built up over time. Perhaps what’s missing is that most intangible of ingredients: genuine intensity, which is easy to communicate live but difficult to capture on record. In fact Dead Magic is more like its title than von Hausswolff no doubt intended. This is a record by a special talent, but Dead Magic feels like a sound learned by rote. It’s an album certain of what it wants to be, but lacking in the naturalness needed to truly convince, let alone amaze.

That naturalness emerges too late, on closer ‘Källans återuppståndelse’. Appropriately for a song about resurrection, it’s far more captivating than any of the four tracks that precede it. As the string-accompanied organ swells alongside von Hausswolff’s spectral vocals, it’s with just a couple of minutes left on the clock that Dead Magic reaches its state of mystical nirvana. It’s a real shame about the disappointment that came before it.