I’ll be straight with you dear reader, I’d never heard of Clara Strauch until I chanced upon an email from her that had been overlooked and almost zapped.
I’m not sure if she is still resident in Sweden, where she has roots on the island of Gotland, or in the US, where she has worked as both a musician and an actress. Or if she is frequently in transit between them as so many artists are.
Let’s call her Swedish-American. Sometimes these things matter a lot; in this case they don’t.
She has released two albums with classy, arty titles (I almost said arty-farty) – ‘Persephone’ and ‘Jupiter’, which sound like the names of the kids who go glamping at Glastonbury, with their caviar, truffle and champagne hampers, or the names of the customers lampooned by Harry Enfield in the Harry & Paul TV comedy sketch series, the ones with more money than sense who buy tat for big bucks at his ‘antique’ store in London’s trendy Notting Hill called ‘I saw you coming’.
I’m painting this picture because, having just junked a new Finnish death metal track in favour of this new single of hers, ‘The Carousel ‘ – her first in five years -I got the idea in my head that she might be just a little too posh for some readers.
What a mistake that was. It’s sensational.
Imagine a piece of work the basic framework of which is a refabrication of a Holly Palmer song – I’m thinking especially of ‘That’s why they call it Rome’, together with Palmer’s little vocal tricks and then spiced up with contributions from Regina Spektor (together with some of hers), also selected Kate Bush squeals, and aided and abetted by her own multi-tracked choir (with a flavour of classic baroque Katzenjammer), then complemented by a pipe organ contribution from Anna von Hausswolff.
If that is too tasty even to contemplate, you’ve come home and your gourmet dinner’s waiting.
It helps that she is an actress. Every word, every syllable is crystal clear and enables you to discern quite wonderful lines like:
“Getting dizzy from the pain/the reigning sadist within her veins
Frozen in there from past mistakes
A carousel, a cell, built to protect her/from loving again…
From living again”.
That’s poetry.
The production is so good it might have been recorded live as the outro to a stage musical.
‘The Carousel’ concerns finding a way forward after experiencing trauma and she says the music came out of a long healing journey, adding that whatever challenges the listener may be facing, she hopes it too can be a source of strength and courage – as it has been for her – and that it can alleviate some suffering in these times.
It strikes me (I almost wrote strauchs me) that there are dozens of human theatres around the world right now, where this song would be more than welcome.
The imagery alone of the carousel was enough to recommend the song to me. A device intended to generate pleasure but which can also terrify. Will it ever stop? Imagery that was and still is so well depicted in live performances of Nightwish’s ‘Last Ride of the Day’ and a song which contains two lines so relevant to the philosophy of Clara’s song:
“It’s hard to light a candle/easy to curse the dark instead”.
Even more evocative is the title of the album that this single is a teaser for, ‘Lilith’, referencing the myth of Adam’s first wife and first female human, who was cast out of the Garden of Eden and demonised, and who has figured in work by a clutch of artists from Genesis to Clara’s compatriot Resmiranda (Åsa Larsson).
‘Lilith’, will be out on March 20th.
(Continues after the Spotify link)
Find her on:
https://www.instagram.com/clara.strauch
https://clarastrauch.bandcamp.com/music
