Torontonian Katie Stelmanis started her music career as prodigious classical performer, singing for the Canadian Children’s Opera at the age of ten and planned to go to college to pursue a career in classical music. She then decided to give up on that to tour the DIY punk scene and in 2009 released her debut solo album Join Us before putting a band together with former Galaxy bandmate Maya Postepski and ex-Spiral Beach Dorian Wolf, originally called Private Life then renamed Austra after Stelmanis’ middle name.
Stelmanis clearly belongs to the clan of Zola Jesus (QRO photos), Bat For Lashes (QRO live review), Esben & The Witch (QRO photos), Fever Ray and other new sisters of the moon that have been emulating Siouxsie Sioux for a while now, but if the classical-medieval-gothic atmosphere of her eponymous project left most people indifferent, with Feel It Break, her debut album with Austra, in cleverly combining the gothic sound with operatic melodies reminiscent of Tori Amos (QRO interview) and “Hounds of Love” era-Kate Bush, arpeggiated cold wave synths and skeletal yet hypnotic percussion, she managed to find a winning formula. Austra music draws from PJ Harvey (QRO album review) to the synth-pop of Depeche Mode, the industrial rock of Nine Inch Nails, dance electronica, Broadway musical, even Giorgio Moroder for the thumping beat, but still manages to have a distinctive sound mainly thanks to Stelmanis’ enchanting, haunting, dramatic voice capable of a virtuoso-ism almost unheard before in the genre: on “Lose It” her trill could shatter stained glass and she comfortably jumps from one octave to the other; elsewhere she uses primordial shudder (“The Future”) and air inhalations (“Beat and the Pulse”) to create melodies.
Both musically and lyrically the album is a constant push and pull between beauty and ugliness, a juxtaposition between hard and soft, light and dark, erotic and dangerous. This psychic struggle, this disconnection is well described in lines such as, “I don’t want to sympathize with the darkness” (“Hate Crime”) or, “My face screams without any motion” (“Lose It”). The love Stelmanis sings about is threatening and violent: on “The Future” she talks about a decaying relationship, “I came so hard / In your mouth / I saw the future / It was dark”; she castigates traitors on “Darken Her Horse”; she’s a scavenger clawing after “bones or anything grown” on “Spellwork”.
The record is sonically dense and production is strong throughout. The songs flow together, giving the album a cohesive atmospheric vibe, but among them “Darken Her Horse”, the beautiful album opener, and their lead single “Beat and The Pulse” with its devilishly synths and Stelmanis’ sexual gasps, definitely stand out.
Feel It Break seems a bit front-loaded though: the ballads of the second half sound more like fillers with the only exception of the beautiful piano-led Tori Amos-y “The Beast”, cleverly chosen as album closer. Alas, this somehow leaves you under the impression that Austra have extracted as much as they can out of one particular sound, and while they have done a great job balancing mystery and experimentalism with melody and accessibility, they may get trapped in that sound and not have much left to say in the future.
MP3 Stream: “Darken Her Horse”
