Caprice Records/Alarm Music
Swedish husband-and-wife duo Andreas Werliin and Mariam Wallentin present the atmospheric follow up to their unique orch-pop debut Heartcore .
Two years into its professional collaboration the duo behind Wildbirds & Peacedrums continue to produce a tantalizing amalgam of exploratory soundscapes and hot jazz improv. Given the couple’s penchant for fusing elemental joys and pains into a spiritual passion play for the intellect; it’s not surprising that the luminous duo was named Swedish Jazz Act of the Year in 2008.
Truly an innovative talent Wallentin uses her crystalline voice to relate strange poetry and bardic epics atop a misty audio landscape that’s as raw as it is refined. Life-partner Werliin furnishes her chants with his nu-tribal percussion and the occasional interjection of xylophone dulcimer and synths. Employing a variety of choral techniques over the course of the album’s 10 songs Wallentin moves unfettered between Mongolian throat-singing and fantastical Bjork-esque spoken-word pieces. Meanwhile her husband ranges from austere to frantic providing intricate percussion that both punctuates and compels her sonic outbursts on cuts like “There is No Light.” Bounding across the tundra with an urgency that is pure rock ’n’ roll; Wallentin’s lyrical fantasies draw you in as on the bold foray “So Soft So Pink” only to retreat into themselves on the more introspective “Places.” It’s as if she ran to the far end of the musical world looked over the edge of the precipice and asked herself “What would Joan Jett do?”
