Moving away from the ambient, dreamy synths of her 2021 album Change, the British German singer-songwriter Anika Henderson’s third LP is wilder, grittier, more post-punk, grungey, and themed around frustration, anger, and confusion with the current world. Her style here is more reminiscent of early PJ Harvey, Siouxsie Sioux, a little of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but also with her vocal style and repeating phrases, summoning up what it might have sounded like if Nico was in the postpunk band. Recorded live to tape at Berlin's Hansa Studios, there’s a raw, visceral energy and emotions, stripped back into simplicity. Standouts include the thrumming, hautning opener and single Hearsay which attacks the divisiveness of fake news; One Way Ticket, which critiques the rise of fascism. the more personal, repetitive but oddly deadpan Oxygen (“take me to the maximum … absolute … give me what I want”)'; the shoegazey, dark Walk Away (“Sometimes I know life can be confusing … life can suck … so screw you!”). The album however, ends not on a different note musically, but with the sensual images of meadows and pulling her fingers through Buttercups (“I’m pulling my hands through, it’s easy like butter, their gazing smiling faces look up at me … oh the simpler days ...”). Eccentric, strange but oddly alluring. Out on Sacred Bones Records.
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