Belgian introvert Annelies Monseré's folk experimentation has never sounded more vital than on 'Mares', an unusual, layered interrogation of trauma and memory explored via frothy, confident dirges that straddle court music, experimental minimalism, pulsing electronics and dreamlike drone. It sounds like a baroque-folk cousin to Broadcast’s ‘Tender Buttons’ - with all the goosebump-inducing goo the comparison entails.
For two decades now Monseré has been quietly issuing some of the most beautiful and gently thorny minimal folk music we've heard. With her last album, 2018's 'Happiness Is Within Sight', she released on the Stroom label - whose sense of genre fluidity, narrative world-building and (relative) atemporality chimes directly with Monseré’s prevailing, oddly unique aesthetic outlook.
Monseré now lands on Horn of Plenty for ‘Mares’, her most complete and memorable full-length to date, an album "about childhood memories of the sea...enhanced by future events". The most immediately striking dimension is her keen grasp of euphonious sonics; there aren't many elements, but each plays an important part, from wheezing indian Harmonium and Accordion to strangled, other-worldly electronics. Before ‘Mares’, Monseré's music was mostly accompanied by just guitar and piano, but here she allows other elements to infiltrate the mood - the oddly snappy pulse of a drum machine refracting into newly uncovered levels. On 'Shells’, unstable harmonium drones, dulled electrified folk and Monseré's ghosted articulations make for a potently weird mix somewhere between Broadcast’s ‘Subject To the Ladder’, metronomic Nico and Tudor court music. It sounds ridiculous - but is potently mesmerising in execution.
Monseré's cover of Cyril Tawney's 'Sally Free and Easy' from 1958 is the album’s centrepoint. The song was brought to wider attention by Pentangle in the 1970s, and has been covered by everyone from Marianne Faithfull to Flying Saucer Attack in the years since. Monseré's version is unabashedly peculiar; she applies her well-defined methodology to a standard that's familiar but malleable; jangling folk guitars replaced with rippling harmonium drones and the memorable vocal part sung slowly and deliberately, allowing the notes in-between to ring out like church bells at night. Monseré tackles her lyrical content with similar vigour, disassembling the original's problematic themes about a sailor blaming a woman for his suicide by centring her own vocals against a male backing.
These dagger-sharp turns are balanced with occasional instrumental interludes, like 'August II', a wafting harmonium-led composition that sounds both medieval and modern. But it's her poetic, vocal-led songs that have us enraptured - Monseré's voice never overwhelms her instrumentation and balances on a precarious ledge without falling. What was once congenial and purred is now clearly stated and uncanny. 20 odd years of honing her craft has granted Monseré a clarity of vision that's captivating to behold, with ‘Mares’ being her most uneasy and satisfying despatch to date.
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Re-press - second pressing. Cover features drawings of the sea by Annelies Monseré.
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Belgian introvert Annelies Monseré's folk experimentation has never sounded more vital than on 'Mares', an unusual, layered interrogation of trauma and memory explored via frothy, confident dirges that straddle court music, experimental minimalism, pulsing electronics and dreamlike drone. It sounds like a baroque-folk cousin to Broadcast’s ‘Tender Buttons’ - with all the goosebump-inducing goo the comparison entails.
For two decades now Monseré has been quietly issuing some of the most beautiful and gently thorny minimal folk music we've heard. With her last album, 2018's 'Happiness Is Within Sight', she released on the Stroom label - whose sense of genre fluidity, narrative world-building and (relative) atemporality chimes directly with Monseré’s prevailing, oddly unique aesthetic outlook.
Monseré now lands on Horn of Plenty for ‘Mares’, her most complete and memorable full-length to date, an album "about childhood memories of the sea...enhanced by future events". The most immediately striking dimension is her keen grasp of euphonious sonics; there aren't many elements, but each plays an important part, from wheezing indian Harmonium and Accordion to strangled, other-worldly electronics. Before ‘Mares’, Monseré's music was mostly accompanied by just guitar and piano, but here she allows other elements to infiltrate the mood - the oddly snappy pulse of a drum machine refracting into newly uncovered levels. On 'Shells’, unstable harmonium drones, dulled electrified folk and Monseré's ghosted articulations make for a potently weird mix somewhere between Broadcast’s ‘Subject To the Ladder’, metronomic Nico and Tudor court music. It sounds ridiculous - but is potently mesmerising in execution.
Monseré's cover of Cyril Tawney's 'Sally Free and Easy' from 1958 is the album’s centrepoint. The song was brought to wider attention by Pentangle in the 1970s, and has been covered by everyone from Marianne Faithfull to Flying Saucer Attack in the years since. Monseré's version is unabashedly peculiar; she applies her well-defined methodology to a standard that's familiar but malleable; jangling folk guitars replaced with rippling harmonium drones and the memorable vocal part sung slowly and deliberately, allowing the notes in-between to ring out like church bells at night. Monseré tackles her lyrical content with similar vigour, disassembling the original's problematic themes about a sailor blaming a woman for his suicide by centring her own vocals against a male backing.
These dagger-sharp turns are balanced with occasional instrumental interludes, like 'August II', a wafting harmonium-led composition that sounds both medieval and modern. But it's her poetic, vocal-led songs that have us enraptured - Monseré's voice never overwhelms her instrumentation and balances on a precarious ledge without falling. What was once congenial and purred is now clearly stated and uncanny. 20 odd years of honing her craft has granted Monseré a clarity of vision that's captivating to behold, with ‘Mares’ being her most uneasy and satisfying despatch to date.