Anna von Hausswolff surprised us greatly last year with her latest album Iconoclasts (review). The Swedish artist suddenly emerged from the darkness to show us a dazzling light, taking her furious creativity to unprecedented heights; the album disturbed us, intrigued us and ultimately won us over. Now that her tour is passing through France, we went to see her in Paris with a certain curiosity, wondering how this extraordinary album would translate on stage and eager to hear some of the darker tracks we knew. At the same time, we were going to discover another Swedish artist, Lisen Rylander Löve, whose experiments combining saxophone and electronics under the influence of jazz resonate with the recent shift taken by Anna von Hausswolff.
Lisen Rylander Löve
The Trabendo is already packed when the lights go down. They won't come back on for another half hour. Half an hour is short, but it's enough for Lisen Rylander Löve to take her audience by the hand and invite them into her world.
In the dim light, with her saxophone, she creates a film noir atmosphere, mysterious and opaque. Perhaps difficult to grasp in the studio due to its eclecticism, her music finds a unity and coherence in live performance that makes it easier to immerse oneself in. It's not yet 8 p.m., but it feels as if we've been stuck in a bar lost in time for several nights already. Her voice reaches us through thick layers of filters, a kind of ghostly call haunted by the spectres of Beth Gibbons. Her dark jazz is interspersed with electronic layers, menacing drones and mutant experiments that she performs alone on stage. The audience is already listening religiously: they know what they've come to see and know that this isn't the kind of concert where you take off your T-shirt and wave it above your head. A few cynics feared they would be politely bored, but Lisen Rylander Löve knows how to capture our attention and trap us in her darkness. One might wonder, however, whether the musical proximity to the headliner is not too obvious... should one stick to the same sound aesthetics or try to surprise? It's up to you to make up your own mind, but the artists on stage tonight shared this gift for transforming time into reverie. A beautiful thread began to weave itself through the darkness, because a few minutes later, it was she who once again launched Anna von Hausswolff's ceremony.
Anna von Hausswolff
When the lights go out and the saxophone sounds again, however, Lisen Rylander Löve is back on stage, but she is no longer alone: around the spotlight that illuminates her, we can see the other musicians and, behind her, the small blonde figure of Anna von Hausswolff standing next to her organ. It is Lisen's saxophone that introduces Consensual Neglect, a beautiful instrumental track in the middle of the album Iconoclasts. Anna then begins to sing, powerful and serene, and the moment arrives: the guitarist, keyboardist and drummer come to life under the lights, and we recognise the slowly ascending track Facing The Atlas. It was just a prelude, a warm-up, because once this gentle ascent was over, the concert took off with the following tracks from the latest album: the vibrant The Mouth ended with a sudden furious acceleration where the drums went wild, more chaotic than in the studio, while Anna von Hausswolff was clearly unwilling to stand still, jumping around with a contagious energy; the epic The Iconoclast shows her moving from fury to renewed serenity with unstoppable power in her high-pitched flights; even the ballad The Whole Woman, which was a duet with Iggy Pop on the album, doesn't take us out of this energy, thanks to Anna's conviction and the quiet force of the rhythm. As we can see, the new tracks, with their surprisingly pop orientation, have a beautiful power live, filled with a liberating energy.
To our great delight, however, we also have the opportunity to hear several tracks from Anna von Hausswolff's previous works. The emotional turnaround is complete when The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra bursts in, terrifying in its repetitive violence and Anna's desperate cries! The same thing happens again, but in a different way, when we return to the tracks from Iconoclasts with the dazzling Stardust, followed by the bittersweet ballad Aging Young Women, before moving on to the dark ambient incantations of Ugly and Vengeful, a monument of anguish that leads to a hellish finale... Ugly and Vengeful and The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra are both taken from Dead Magic, Anna von Hausswolff's darkest album to date: clearly, the aim was to maximise the emotional range! The encore still had some wonderful surprises in store for us: Funeral for My Future Children from the more sober album Ceremony, featuring a refreshingly prominent organ, and above all Struggle With The Beast, the richest and most epic track on Iconoclasts! In its own way, it is as powerful as The Mysterious Vanishing, and it is with this victorious defiance that Anna von Hausswolff finally leaves us.
The concert was long, yet we didn't want it to end. There was no need for special effects to draw us in; visually, the show made do with fairly simple lighting effects. Anna von Hausswolff's passion and sincerity in her performance, as well as the vitality with which the songs were performed live, were enough to make this concert an extraordinary experience.
