Yet, on the first few notes of “Facing Atlas”, Anna von Hausswolff voraciously charges right through the unknown. Her vocals come in resounding around post-rock soars. “Can’t we just run away / It’s no fun to stay / Can’t we just break free from ourselves?” she reflects. Her spirit comes unwavering.
Progressing past the drone and neo-classical experiments of her previous records, ICONOCLASTS pulls back the curtains and opens a shift in Anna von Hausswolff’s overall musical makeup. She endeavours in her upper register, coils around mountainous post-rock swells and jazzy detours, and swims within brighter accompaniments. It’s the complete opposite of her darker, bellowing projects of Dead Magic and All Thoughts Fly, but it’s a flip that she is willing to take.
This manner of melodic approach comes with its own soars and dips. For the matter on “The Iconoclast” and “Stardust”, they succeed, spilling forth airy saxophones, galloping percussions, gauzy synths, and bolting pipe organs to accentuate Hausswolff’s soaring vocal acrobatics. She sounds vividly courageous, where in all the challenges slipping through her, she never backs down. “The Mouth” and “Struggle with the Beast,” however, despite their cinematic fervor, start to wander within their stretch of runtime. The beauty can still be felt, but the progressions do not hit their riveting impact.
The change continues to the collaborations — the first time that Hausswolff has done so — that is being included, all of which synergizes in great effect. Iggy Pop plays a weary lover on the glacial atmosphere of “The Whole Woman”, croaking an empathetic understanding to Hausswolff’s careening flaws: “The mistakes that you’ve made / But I know it from the start / And I knew it from the start”. On “Aging Young Woman”, Ethel Cain offers support, embracing her richer mid-range to become in sync with Hausswolff’s tone. Singing together in harmony as the grandeur of strings and organs amplifies their feminine resonance.
What puts ICONOCLAST firmly at the peak of Hausswolff’s oeuvre is not just because of its grand ambitiousness but also its thematic richness. She embodies an unfathomable amount of vigor and hope, with enough self-awareness to keep up a grounded perspective. Her main adversaries now are hate, and also time. The haunting drones of “An Ocean of Time” efficiently serve as a reminder of the limits of living. Time can never be brought back; it only ticks forward. This piece is what makes the following penultimate song, “Unconditional Love,” tenderly stirring. A sisterly duet between Maria and Anna that is solemn as it is moving, painting an inseparable bond that never seems to sever, even amidst the presence of looming death. “I won’t go until you let go / Foggy eyes, they are here to glow” echoes both sisters. The title of the song truly is apt.
ICONOCLAST is a leap of faith where big changes in Hausswolff’s musical direction are delivered in accordance with the richness in volume and scale. Wide-open structures are detailed with crescendos and rhythmic brilliance, collaborations are treated like important characters in her story, and keeping hope amidst passages of time and violence is gripped like a pendant containing poignant power. In breaking the tides of what was once familiar, Anna Von Hausswolff revels in the abundance that she fully embraces.
