Soap and Skin - Lovetune For Vacuum (2009)

Link

Envy is a funny emotion to experience when first listening to an album. But when it’s an as powerful and haunting piece of work as the debut by Soap & Skin, it’s an apt description – frustration that they created such a piece and you haven’t. Then you find out ‘they’ is in fact just a single she, and she is only 18! Yet Anja Plaschg has crafted an incredible soundscape, reminiscent of Sigur Ros and their fellow pixie Scandinavian types, Lovetune For Vacuum contains soaring tunes, uplifting and whimsical one moment, plummeting to melancholic depths the next, all the while tied together by the somewhat ethereal tones of Anja’s singing.

The main downside for this album is the tags being banded about regarding it that will alienate some listeners before it gets near their ears. As with every other record no doubt released this month, it’s apparently an electronica album, creating a certain perception of its contents. There’s certainly electronic music on here, but this is used to create compositions that are delicate and feel almost acoustic in their disposition. In fact there’s only one tune that comfortably fits the electronic niche and yet this, annoyingly, demonstrates another string to Miss Plaschg’s already highly strung bow. Narcmedia