Clara Engel - Visitors Are Allowed One Kiss (2016) EN

Swans! Swans everywhere! Swansong presents an album swarming with swans. Dark folk, slow bedroom pop, shadowy singer/songwriter music, it doesn't match the artist's name. Bright angel (clara - (lat.) "clear, bright, famous", Engel - (nie.) "angel")? Her voice is angelic, no doubt but the massive acoustic guitar strings and quiet drums, ambients, xylophones lurking somewhere in the background create very intimate and hardly bright spectacle. If the artist uses a lot of lights when performing than, well, she shouldn't. 

Not to mention Engel's lyrics. About uneasy spirit (as far as I remember, angels with uneasy spirits didn't end up extremely well), about love for an evil queen, about restless love. "Crepuscular hymns" as she described her music sums it up very well. The things you think about when you can't sleep.

I can hardly refrain from comparing Engel to Anna von Hausswolff who I wrote about recently. Less Swedish pagan vibes but the atmosphere at least equally dense.

But where are the swans? They are present not only in the first track. The artist gathered musicians from all over the world to record the album. And some of them are the top league artists - Aidan Baker from Nadja and Thor Harris - yes, the member of the famous Swans. The thing he did in "Swallow Me" is pure poetry written for flute, marimba and vibes.

"Visitors Are Allowed One Kiss" costs $5 and it's well spent money. Check it out.

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