Music Banter - View Single Post - 12 For '12: Anteater's Top Albums Of 2012

Anteater · 01-12-2013, 11:20 PM

Susanne Sundfør - The Silicone Veil

Well, I won't beat around the bush: Fiona Apple bored the living fuck out of me in 2012, as did about 90% of what ended up on NPR and Pitchfork's Top 2012 lists. We don't (and shouldn't) celebrate artists just for being arty: we celebrate them for making art that isn't pretentious for the sake of impressing your fedora-wearing amigos and isn't shoved up its own avant-garde asshole (such as Swans The Seer: people bitch about Yes and Tales From Topographic Oceans, and yet they can sit through 30 minutes straight of Gira's endless repetitive noodling and treat it like a spiritual orgasm. It's a good record, but that's still a double standard, folks: give me a break!)

That rant aside, Susanne Sundfør is a babe from the land of the ice and snow who'd normally get pigeonholed in the generally "quirky/Indie" sphere of female singer-songwriters who magnetically attract critical acclaim in the same way that Daniel Day Lewis attracts Academy Award nominations. That being said, this girl is in a league of her own. Partly because she can actually sing in tune, and partly because the songs themselves on this 3rd studio outing, The Silicone Veil, from the arrangements to the production style to her choice of instrumentation, are gorgeous even when they don't knock your socks off. Think Depeche Mode meets the lovechild of Bjork and Joanna Newsom and you'll have some degree of comprehension on how this clicks together.

The YouTube videos below can instill a more thorough appreciation of her particular sound than I could in words, but nevertheless: this is a beautiful album that's slipped under a lot of people's radars for the last couple of months....don't let it slip through yours! It nearly made my list after all.