Anna Calvi - One Breath (Deluxe Edition) (2014)

Anna Calvi's new album more than avoids the much-dreaded "sophomore-slump" syndrome. One Breath manages to retain many of the traits that made her debut memorable, while moving in totally new directions at the same time-- no easy feat. The first two tracks (Suddenly and Eliza) and the fifth track (Sing To Me) are as close to her earlier material as the album gets. Even on these tracks we notice immediately a denser, more layered sound than the first album, with the addition of organ and synth parts, and, in Sing To Me, a string section. According to Anna Calvi, Sing To Me is an homage to Maria Callas, though it sounds closer to film composer Ennio Morricone than Verdi. Piece by Piece makes it apparent that this album is much more experimental than her debut. That track, which slightly resembles St. Vincent's Cruel, gives listeners a first taste of the dissonant arrangements and jabs of noise that pervade much of the album. "I will forget you piece by piece," she sings, as the fragmented arrangements mirror her description of painful memories disintegrating over time. Cry brings a violent emotional element into the album lyrically and musically. The song builds from eerily subdued verses carried by organ to carefully placed shards of angry guitar and a ferocious crescendo, in which she howls"If you love me won't you cry?!" Tristan rocks hard, driven by synth-bass, aggressive guitar work, and powerful vocals. But the real surprises start with the title track, One Breath. "I've got one second to live before I say what I've got to say/ it's gonna change everything," she intones against a hushed, pulsating backdrop which builds slowly to a blaze of white noise before abruptly segueing into a haunting string arrangement accompanied only by a droning synthesizer. Everything does change with that song, as there are no sweetly melodic pop songs (like the single, Eliza or the gentler Sing To Me) thereafter.

The strings (arranged by Anna Calvi and well-known arranger Fiona Brice) play a prominent role on the remainder of the album, which is far more experimental and disquieting than the first half. Love of My Life comes off a bit like noise-rock on the surface (think Pavement at their most abrasive fronted by a young PJ Harvey). But under the swathes of noise, it's a tightly controlled arrangement with lots of extreme dynamic shifts ranging from shrieking build-ups to silence, a blistering guitar lead, soft synth textures, and back to noise-- all in alternating 7/8 & 4/4 time and within 3 minutes. Carry Me Over returns to the theme of moving through and surviving pain and loss, "The dead lie, but you carry me over" she sings, seeking something "deeper than my voice." It's my personal favorite, and, I think one of the most original songs she has written to date. "I hear you moving on like the tracks of a train, where there's no way back to the start," she sings as a complex interaction of marimba, vibraphone, strings and guitar wind in and out of a long instrumental mid-section with atonal elements. There's a hallucinatory intensity in this piece that goes beyond atmospherics and seems to express raw terror, with strings that recall Penderecki, and dissonant guitar stabs towards the end. The closing track, The Bridge, moves outside of rock and pop structures altogether, occupying an ambient musical space not too far from, say, Scott Walker. She sings of a bridge "swaying," as a swirl of vocal work and ambient textures shimmer strangely in Cathedral-like reverb, before melting into silence. By the time The Bridge closes the album, it's hard to recall the catchy pop refrains of Suddenly and Eliza. Yet the album seems to unfold in a natural progression from track to track. If anything, it sounds very carefully and appropriately sequenced, embodying a musical and emotional trajectory. Hopefully, old fans will embrace the experimentalism and emotional harshness on this album, while those who wrote her off as a hyped artist before will now rethink their opinion.