[rayword45]

Day 478: Dead Magic by Anna Von Hausswolff

Going down the 2018 charts on RateYourMusic to judge the internet music nerd consensus taste. This one's pretty high up on the charts, top 5 I believe? I know nothing about whatever the fuck darkwave is other than I've listened to a few albums of the genre, let's check this out.

The first track starts gorgeously, with a spare organ being met with airy, ritual-esque vocals and spare string orchestration. Then it devolves into some weird, agitating accordion-sounding bullshit and meanders for about eleventy-seven years. What a disappointment, although it started well enough. The other super-long song, the centrepiece of the album, has no such annoying passages and is a much heavier, more rock-esque track which fits my taste perfectly.

As for the short songs? Or well, relatively shorter? Closer Källans återuppståndelse is a beautiful funeral dirge which closes perfectly with some feedback and fuzz, The Mysterious Vanishing Of Electra is a haunting ritual chant where the overaffected, screechy vocals actually work, and The Marble Eye just sounds like creepy church music.

Overall? Hit-or-miss. I laud the atmospheric approach to this whole thing but it doesn't make every track automatically good or interesting. I'll return to this for a third time later and see how my opinions shift.

Best Track: Ugly And Vengeful
Rating: 5.5/10