Anna Von Hausswolff

★★★★

Live At Montreux Jazz Festival SOUTHERN LORD/POMPERIPOSSA. CD/DL/LP

Banshee-voiced Swedish pipe organist in full flight.

Five years after her late friend Albin Oskarsson first petitioned Montreux Jazz Festival, Anna Von Hausswolff got the call in 2018 to support Nick Cave. Centred on the unbound gothic splendour of that year’s

Dead Magic, her six distended readings stretch her bleak folkloric lyrics and dark instrumentation to the hilt. With a similar mechanical pulse to latter-day Swans, the malevolent heft of The Mysterious Vanishing Of Electra and epic dirge Ugly And Vengeful build to almost unbearable climaxes as the gloomy Gothenburg soprano’s unearthly howls and unnerving ululations echo Yma Sumac and Diamanda Galás. It’s not all sturm und drang though. The beatless despair of Källans återuppståndelse shows the harmonic subtleties at play within Von Hausswolff’s bewitching repertoire of dissonance and drama.