Memoria (Sweden) – From the Bones of the Dead (single/track from forthcoming album)
A cheery subject to brighten up a Tuesday evening. We’re used to seeing darkwave Gothess Memoria on a video (of which she makes quite a lot) rather than just hearing her but perhaps the fact there isn’t one (yet) is a blessing in disguise, given the subject matter here.
This is the last single from the album ‘From the Bones’, which will be released on March 3rd. She was here twice last year, firstly with ‘Girl’, a song about sexual abuse which I wasn’t really taken with, and then later with ‘Canary’, focused on war, death, escape and tough decisions, and which was much more like it.
But with ‘From the Bones of the Dead’ I can state categorically that she’s fully returned to form. This one takes me back to her ‘Cravings’ album a few years back which hooked me in straight off.
The song is inspired by ‘Gretel and Hansel’ (or ‘Hansel and Gretel’ as we say in the UK; perhaps it’s something to do with their pronouns), and especially the Oz Perkins film from 2020 “whose aesthetic, photo and music floored Tess de la Cour (her real name) completely”.
The title comes from the beckoning call of the witch, luring Hansel into death. It’s a song about Black Magic and darkness tempting you into depravity. Strange what a box of chocolates can do.
And this is what she is good at. Very good. In fact I’d be happy if she put aside the politics and social virtue signalling altogether in favour of work like this.
The song comes in like one of Vlad’s hypersonic rockets with a bass line mimicking a pneumatic drill and the strings must be smoking by the end. She wrings a strong melody out of it and it’s unrelenting. She doesn’t really ‘do’ bridges – she’d probably destroy them anyway – but the song does slow down on a couple of occasions like Messi takes a break between mesmerising defences these days.
Vocally, she’s a banshee.
Don’t have nightmares.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memoriasthlm
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/memoria_sthlm/
