Astrid Swan reviewed

Astrid Swan
Poverina
(Minty Fresh)

By puppeteering her voice in such a way, Astrid Swan is sure to draw deadringer comparisons to Kate Bush and Tori Amos. But when she’s on her game the Finn portrays perhaps a more stable, but equally delectable artist.

Four songs into Poverina and Swan is only shooting 50 percent — a poor average for someone with such distinct influences. The beauty (or trouble), however, is Swan is a much better sponge than copy machine. If we’re to take her naming the album after one of the better of these songs as a sign, she’s in good hands. Both the title track and “Ten Degrees/To The North” have an instrumental and melodic fondness for crushing arrangements to take her mind off her own voice and introduce a joyous bouyancy. Otherwise her imitations are flat and flattening. Swan’s English isn’t always the best — she has rock ‘n’ roll fantasies that border on cliché; “The Kinda Tea You Like To Cry In” doesn’t quite translate — but when her aural sanctimony begins to derail she quickly follows with a Regina Spektor-like iconoclasm.

– Steve Forstneger

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