THE BLACKHEART ORCHESTRA

Mesmeranto ESOTERIC ANTENNA

Manchester duo’s brave grief cycle beauty.

Grief is particularly tough to deal with in song without falling flat or overegging it, but Chrissy Mostyn channels her own journey born from experience beautifully on this second album by The Blackheart Orchestra, whose only other member is multiinstrumentalist Rick Pilkington. Every note is charged with tangible emotion as Chrissy delivers 14 songs composed and recorded over 18 months in the UK, Denmark and Germany that run for an hour and start with losing a friend on the starkly-powerful Ennikur. She continues to wrap her appealingly fragile upper register quaver around mainly pianogarnished slowies such as All Of Me, sepulchral More and haunted Left To Right; the last two displaying Kate Bush flavours in vocal style, the overdubbed harmonies and soft-focus keyboards. The pair aren’t afraid to use space or even dip into 80s Euro disco on Drown Me Out and Eurovision on the chorus of Try. Such playfulness keeps them human, making the poignant double-headed punch-line of cello-draped Violet and monumental Another Lifetime all the more effective. Ultimately, the duo are to be congratulated for coating this eternally difficult subject so sensitively, evocatively and, most of all, sweetly.