Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
In the depths of a cello’s heart lives a sound that is arguably unique across the members of the string musical family. The double bass might be stout, resolute, never wavering in its texture, the violin may be more beautiful, the sound of the siren as she entices sailors to fall at her feet as the waves crash into rocks and the heart breaks with the sound of handsome, ethereal taste.
Yet it is in the cello that the fires of passion burn more readily, the sense of the hypnotic, of the frenzied and the possessive nature of the instrument seems as if it always played with noir like creativity. In the hands of some it can feel as if it is played by a deity, a god, a human being with more than just a soul resting in its battle-ready form.
Losing form is not the point of existence, nobody should ever be made to feel as if their lives are inconsequential, that like marzipan we can be stretched to the point of being see-through, impermeable, as porous as a sponge, losing form is never an option, and for the native of North Carolina’s Asheville and member of the band Rasputina, Polly Panic (Jenette Mackie) the dynamite explosion she creates on her third solo album, Losing Form instead becomes a fire, a storm in which only the valiant, the brave and the fearless can find a home initially, until they coheres others to bathe in the dancing and flickering open soul on offer.
The thought of the Viking heart rampaging and pillaging across Northern Europe comes to mind when the music hits the listener like a storm, a tornado of souls fired up by the intensity of expression, impenetrable, beautiful as one who takes the cello in the call to arms can do. In songs such as Beggar Rose, Purpose, Hollows, To The Bone, Shadow and the album’s title track, Losing Form, life seems to roared into view, a sense of clarity, a vision of that fore burning deep in the heart and causing change, being instrumental in the artist finding a new way to express the beauty that the cello ultimately provides.
An album that rampages and skilfully navigates the possibilities, that craves not the weakness in those that see being spineless as a virtue, but instead creates a sound of Armageddon fury and fertile belief.
Polly Panic releases Losing Form via Write Hook Records on November 20th.
Ian D. Hall