ALBUM REVIEWS
Listening to Karin Ann’s debut album ‘Through the Telescope’, you’d be forgiven for not realising that the Slovakian singer-songwriter is just 21-years-old. There is a knowing darkness to this music, which brims with observations earned through experience and the mystique of an author with many stories to tell.
“All his skin eaten by worms / Nothing left there / A pile of bones”, Ann sings on ‘Pile of Bones’. For all its macabre imagery – a through line across the album’s 14 tracks – the song is delivered like a fairytale, with Ann’s soft, ethereal vocals floating like wisps of smoke around its beating heart.
Her singing voice is light, calling to mind the ease and indie droll of Faye Webster and Frankie Cosmos. It all feeds into the album’s curious mix of light and dark, as Ann sings through honeyed whispers of deep emotional strife, from losing faith to leaving childhood behind too early, embedding these dark secrets in twinkling melodies and delicate guitar strings. “The band keeps playing while I continue to cry”, she sings softly on dollhouse-like track ‘The Band Keeps Playing’. “Maybe they won’t see that my dress keeps tearing / And it’s swallowing me”.
Ann’s songwriting is at its strongest when it goes for specifics. There’s queer love song ‘Olivia’, ‘A Song for the Moon’ – a love letter to the darker sides of herself – or ‘My Best Work of Art’, the album’s lovely closer that chronicles Ann’s reclamation of her own identity through the lens of painting and brushstrokes.
After a tough few years fighting illness and cutting her teeth in music, Ann delivers a confident and unflinching debut album. ‘Through The Telescope’ weaves her personal struggles into beautiful, potent songwriting, which she gives space to breathe amidst lush vocals and rich, but never overblown instrumentation. Dancing deftly across folk, rock, country and pop, and spanning emotional landscapes from lovestruck to melancholy, this is a most precocious debut.
ALBUM REVIEWS
2024 has been a big year for Lip Critic, who are well on their way to becoming one of the next great New York bands. The quartet – comprising Bret Kaser, Connor Kleitz, Daniel Eberle and Ilan Natter – have spent the past half-decade building a loyal and sizeable hometown following that has, in recent months, caught the attention of music fans across the other side of the Atlantic.
Lip Critic make music that is both freewheeling and fun – with a thrillingly dark, Frankenstein-esque edge to their sound and aesthetic. They have played alongside rappers, hardcore bands and dance acts – and toured with IDLES and Geese – with NME describing their live show as “a pulsating rush of energy” in a five-star review last November. “You never know what sound is going to pop up next – our focus is to not get pinned down into a set of aesthetics, but to stay nimble” Kaser previously told us.
Opener ‘It’s The Magic’ bursts into life with a set of heavy 808s followed by contrasting rhythms. “I told them take their grace / And send it where it came / Only the generous get to live another day,” Kaser sings, evoking a sense of danger. ‘The Heart’ follows, diving headfirst dives into skittish, almost anxiety-inducing drum patterns – it’s wild and brilliantly unnerving.
’Bork Pelly (featuring Gösh and ID.Sus)’ is a perfect fusion of The Prodigy and ’90s hip-hop influences. ‘Death Lurking’ (featuring Izzy Da Fonseca), meanwhile, offers a change of pace, an atmospheric number that builds into a skippy beat fit for headbanging.
Throughout ‘Hex Dealer’, Lip Critic prove why they are the band of the moment. A full-on, disruptive force emerging from their city’s underground scene – their music rides high on a bolt of infectious energy.
