ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF - Iconoclasts

Anna the eternal iconoclast. Having already built a decade-long career on subversion through her shattering gothic liturgies, even drawing accusations of satanism (in France a group of fundamentalist Catholics once blocked her from performing in a church!), the Swedish artist now goes so far as to destroy her own icons. Reinventing herself once again, with courage, in a cathartic record that amounts to a disarming, regenerative journey into herself. "Iconoclasts" thus takes on a double meaning: on one hand, the further expansion of a sound that has never let itself be boxed in by easy labels, and on the other, the refining of that primordial power into more defined shapes, in what she herself has described as her most "traditional" record.

Having reached, with "Dead Magic", the summit of her contemporary neoclassical art, blending drone music, doom metal, singer-songwriter craft and dark prose, the fairy of Gothenburg has kept pushing into uncharted territory, armed with her impetuous voice and her imposing pipe organ, until she fully unleashed her imagination in the Sacred Wood of Bomarzo (Viterbo), the arcane site that inspired her previous, entirely instrumental studio work, "All Thoughts Fly".

In "Iconoclasts", her debut on the new label YEAR0001, that forward flight continues, now paired with a more fully realized exploration of the ballad form, with the support of exceptional guests such as Ethel Cain, Iggy Pop and Abul Mogard. The result is a new kind of gothic, visionary intoxication, though one now filtered through occasional rays of sunlight, able to open the sound up to a more ecstatic, dreamlike dimension, through complex, layered sonic textures that reach out to touch different territories, from art rock to jazz to ambient. A sonic magma in which symphonic drones worthy of Fuck Buttons's "Tarot Sport" coexist with bursts of glittering noise and dreamlike cinematic orchestration.

The ace up the sleeve that Anna von Hausswolff plays to pull off the mission is saxophonist Otis Sandsjö, an avant-garde musician whose disorienting interjections run through the whole album. It's him who drives the ecstatic instrumental “Consensual Neglect”, a tribute to the free jazz of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, and the nearly nine minutes of “Struggle With The Beast”, built on a lopsided, ever-shifting funk, with Anna's voice bursting in at the height of the raging crescendo to sharpen its pathos. And it's Sandsjö again who lends warmth to the spectral “The Mouth” and the convulsive “Stardust”. A constant presence, alternating rough-edged moments – you can even hear fingers striking the keys – with softer, more contemplative sections, as in the rarefied “Aging Young Woman”, a duet with Ethel Cain: a suspended hymn, somewhere between elegy and prayer, evoking the most aching melancholy of Lana Del Rey to reflect on the awareness of time passing and the dream of a family that “slowly fades away”.

The saxophone, then, is the guide that accompanies von Hausswolff on her journey to the underworld: a dizzying descent through the concentric circles of the human mind, amid guilt, redemption and desire. But nothing ever feels overbearing in the universe of "Iconoclasts", too vast to be dominated by any single element. We are majestically ushered inside by the splendid overture of "The Beast", an instrumental whose spiritual tension recalls Coltrane's cosmic meditations. A suspended, solemn introduction that sets the stage for an emotional journey of great intensity, starting with the following "Facing Atlas", which unfolds expansively thanks to a voice that rises in an almost supernatural way, like a Lisa Gerrard immersed in ethereal dream-pop nebulae: between mythology and reality, Anna chases a lost love the way Orpheus chased his Eurydice, only to realize that the past cannot be held onto ("that's not what you want").

At the heart of the album stands the long suite "The Iconoclast", over 11 minutes that fuse the dramatic force of Kate Bush with the tectonic jolts of Swans, in a crescendo that culminates in the touching closing line "Can I protect you": a promise of tenderness amid a blanket of reverb.

Among the collaborations, the one with Iggy Pop inevitably stands out: the Iguana's husky, cavernous voice clashes with, and at the same time melts into, Anna's diaphanous one on "The Whole Woman". A ballad with an almost slowcore feel that serves as the anchor for the whole collection, and one the Swedish singer-songwriter has described this way: "Sometimes you have to dive into the deepest waters and hold your breath for as long as you can. Once you resurface, your gaze can see past the pettiness of life, and only the truth remains. This love song is a tribute to the man who knows how to listen, and it's dedicated to the woman who finds the courage to take the plunge".

While "The Mouth" moves instead in a more folk, almost spiritual dimension, with a warmth that evokes a gospel choir, and the hypnotic "Consensual Neglect" slips into a 1950s jazz-club mood, "Stardust" brings in industrial pulses reminiscent of Einstürzende Neubauten and even kraut-rock echoes within a track that seems to follow the emotional oscillations of its performer, determined to break with convention and react to a collective sense of disorientation: "Let's break free from preconceived ideas about how to live life. Let's not just stand by while the world falls apart", she commented.

The closing triptych is a slow, solemn descent that leads (perhaps) out of the abyss: the funereal ambient of "An Ocean Of Time" weaves ethereal, intangible sounds together with vocal fragments from von Hausswolff and sonic textures courtesy of Abul Mogard; "Unconditional Love" – performed together with her sister, filmmaker Maria von Hausswolff – is a moving ode to the strength of family bonds; while the instrumental "Rising Legends" evaporates in just two and a half minutes like a quiet final fade-out.

The hour and fifteen minutes of "Iconoclasts" thus arrive as the definitive consecration of Anna von Hausswolff, who on this occasion proves more measured vocally too, toning down the piercing screams and invocations of her past. Having shed her gothic-vestal garb, the Swedish artist confronts universal themes head-on – loss, faith, love, aging, depression, disillusionment in the face of a world "full of evil", as she sings in "Facing Atlas". And she does so with a new kind of vulnerability. In the end, perhaps, this is where her deepest iconoclasm truly lies: in the courage to strip away the myth in search, at last, of humanity.

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01/11/2025