Austra - Feel It Break

Thu 7th Jul, 2011 in Music Reviews

There’s definitely something about snow-bound northern regions. Out of Toronto come Austra, purveyors of synth-anchored torch songs in the vein of Zola Jesus and The Knife. Lacking the gothic tinge of the former, or the surreal contortions of the latter, Austra’s debut album Feel It Break nonetheless marks the arrival of a new and interesting voice.

Opening track Darken Her Horse builds from its pulse-and-twinkle origins, to a spare, spacious electro stomp. These two sections contain the blueprint by which Feel It Break is constructed – there’s even a song called Beat and the Pulse. Second track Lose It is more immediate, the sort of song that goes chorus-other chorus-chorus, rather than verse-chorus-verse. Though blissed-out and hook-laden, Lose It falls short of it’s anthemic aspirations, coming off a little thin as a result of its unchanging mood.

This goes for the entire album; there is a constancy of mood that diminishes the emotional impact of the best material, and the musical impact of the album as a whole. It’s a nice mood, but all that yearning, wistfulness and lower-case melancholy starts to feel like aural Xanax after a while. There are plenty of nice riffs scattered throughout the album, like the burbling, Moog-ish riff that powers the confronting Hate Crime, and the glistening, celestial arpeggios that open Spellwork, but too often these striking moments are lost, crowded out by other, superfluous, instrumentation.

The aforementioned Beat and the Pulse is the flipside to this; a lean, icy synth blast with a menacing groove. The best song on the album, it works because lead singer and the primary figure behind Austra, Katie Stelmanis, steps up and provides a star turn. As layers of minor-key sequencers stutter behind her, Stelmanis belts out, “fee-ee-eel it breeeeaaaaaaaak” with absolute conviction.

Whilst these tracks are well-arranged and varied, they scream out for a more authoritative vocal performance to lend them a sense of purpose, of meaning, of conviction. Katie Stelmanis is clearly a more-than-capable singer, but her voice sits way back in the mix, in amongst the synth tones, doggedly refusing to come out and take ownership of a song. As a result, there is a wallpaper-ish tinge to the album, which is a damn shame. Given the quality of some of the components here, it’s a pity that Feel It Break is no more than the sum of its parts.