Photo gallery and words by Maria Kierończyk, review editor – Cat Patalon
The avant-garde Swedish singer, song-writer and composer Anna von Hausswolff set off her tour with a show at Vega in Copenhagen, Denmark promoting her latest album “Iconoclasts” – a bold landscape of instruments, uncanny yet immersive sounds and a palette of emotions.
A fine haze pervarded the air, capturing beams of light that hung in smoke as Von Hausswolff’s concert opened with a live debut of “Consensual Neglect” – immediately taking the audience on a journey through cinematic riffs from saxophonist Otis Sandsjö as Anna took the stage by her signature pipe organ and synths.
The crowd exploded while epic orchestral arrangement, gorgeous stage lighting combined with Anna von Hausswollf’s voice filled the room. She delivered each song with so much emotion that it felt like a sound equivalent of a starburst. Not to sound overly poetic but her voice at times sounds almost animalistic in ways you wouldn’t expect it. Beautiful yet heartbreaking, hopeful but crushing lyrics feel like a presence of something familiar, yet impossible to describe.
Von Hausswollf’s set was filled with brand-new songs such as “The Whole Woman”, “The Iconoclast” and “Aging Yound Women” which, in my opinion, are the most accessible ones on the album. For the part of audience that is familiar with previous Anna von Hausswolff’s projects, she also had a surprise up her sleeve. She performed two songs from Dead Magic, a daring and transcending album released back in 2018 – “The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra” and (my personal favourite) beautifully haunting “Ugly and Vengeful”.
As the night reached out to it’s end, the band returned for the two-song encore beginning with “Funeral for My Future Children”, performed for the first time since 2016. The set closed with “Struggle with the Beast” where the instrument becomes a North Star before Anna’s voice grabs all the attention with “People are dying while I’m playing dead / I’m fucked up in my head” lyric. That one, heard live, send chills down my spine.
Anna von Hausswolff’s seventh album “Iconoclasts” is a catharic and transformative journey into the self, covering themes such as love, loss (of self too) and hope. Basing on her signature uncanny sounds with church organ, Anna von Hausswolff built a sphere with rock and neoclassical compositions making it such a complex record. Five years was definitely worth the wait.
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