JUNGFRAU - S/T
Hannah Louise Grasskamp’s songs are enigmatic Gothic pop confections, blending euphoric impressions of fairy tale magic with undercurrents of intrigue and threat. Fantastic motifs like ice giants and underwater kingdoms are invoked, but unlike most fairy tales, the songs do not present neat resolutions or a coherent moral didactic purpose. They follow a darkwave tradition wherein imagery from childhood fantasy serves to illustrate adult existential concerns – think Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure at their most conflicted and chilling. Grasskamp seems to tap into some reservoir of Central European collective unconsciousness in a manner that has its roots in Goth matriarch Nico and parallels Anna von Hausswolff’s evocations of the uncanny and apocalyptic.
Grasskamp’s Brighton-based band
Jungfrau has acquired a new focus with its shrinkage from quintet to a trio featuring
the vocalist, Matt McCartney on bass, and Timothy Cottrell on synthesizer, and live
and programmed drums. Their new self-titled release features five
tracks that herald a directional shift. Shades of hypnagogic pop and darkwave’s
cross-fertilization with post-metal now overlay and complement the
drone-oriented neo-psych elements present since they began some 10 years ago. A
command of dynamic contrasts suggests other resourceful avant-pop trios like
Blonde Redhead. An affinity for Swans/Neurosis-style riff intensity has been
leavened with the ectoplasmic residue of hauntological raptures whilst ‘Radiant
Palace’ conjures a dub-inflected triphop shimmer akin to Portishead’s most alluring
moments.
Jungfrau follow in the footsteps
of Broadcast in composing songs that conjure an ambiguous sense
of time and memory, both lyrically and musically. Cottrell’s synth recalls the drone
ambience of Anna von Hausswolff’s organ reveries and McCartney’s bass often
takes a predominant melodic role a la post-punk and reggae methodology. The
echo-laden spectrality of ‘Radiant Palace’ could have been carried over from Grasskamp’s
Mancunian collaborators psych-dub outfit Dead Sea Apes. Jungfrau’s stylistic qualities
seem to sit betwixt formal boundaries, borrowing widely, but not declaring
allegiance to any categorisation.
A line from ‘Circular Vision’ – “oozing
from one fate to another” – helps to unpick the etymological origins of
fairy tale, one of the oldest literary genres. In her magisterial study, From
the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers, Marina Warner traces
the word ‘fairy’ to the Latin for fate: “It goes back to a Latin feminine word,
fata, a rare variant of fatum (fate) which refers to a goddess of
destiny.” Fairies in mythology, like the Sybils of Ancient Greece, possess prophetic
powers and offer warnings of future calamity. The titular character in ‘Hey
Louise’ is said to exploit catastrophe, while elsewhere legendary creatures
have weird familial connections, a standard trope of the European fairy tale’s
medieval universe. In ‘Take Me Down’, Grasskamp refers to “silk skin elkes”
whom she loves, but who nevertheless leave her with bleeding feet. Elke is
a German and
Dutch given name that refers to kin and carries meanings of nobility and
strength, but the songwriter uses its homonymic qualities in such a way as to imply
an association with the selkie, the seal/human hybrid of Celtic and Norse
mythology.
Female figures are both glorious
models of freedom and benign natural power – the favoured springtime maiden of opener
‘Fruehling’ - and dangerous shapeshifters, like the cove-dwelling title
character of ‘Hey Louise’ with her pistol and anthropomorphic imagistic
connections with manta rays and jellyfish. By the end of ‘Circular Vision’, the
album’s final track, Grasskamp sings of being “sick and tired of the old
ways.” Heritage and familial ties seem to be deeply ambivalent themes in
her song world, alternately represented as beneficial or harmful chains from one perspective
to the next. Her band mates complement her vision most neatly here to create
the album’s strongest song, an eerie lament revolving majestically around a melancholic
theme that evokes New Order’s instrumental ‘Elegia’ or the more glacial vistas
of Lycia and Cocteau Twins.
Comments
Post a Comment