Album Review

Joana And The Wolf – Natural Born Killer

• 13th Jul 2009

First off; you can tell Joana really wants to be PJ Harvey; straight from the sexy/unsettling feminist iconography of the cover to the grind-blues meets magic realism contained within. Now Polly- when she adopts Her guises on ‘Rid of Me’ and ‘To Bring you My Love’, is from her album sleeve onwards, the kind of tantalising and tragic myth-maker equivalent to Nick Cave’s dramatic personae; Joana comes on as too much wild berry hemp-tight ‘period-painting’ whimsy.

Then you listen and for a minute, amidst the familiar surrounding pro-primitive blues churn, Jo could at least be a Karen O meets Katy Jane Gardside, punctured by cloud-burst sweet feedback trebs and power E chords, but with a flagrant unhinged will to her vocals. Self certain even as the self collapses around her-she’s making art from the pieces, from chameleon’s blood and twigs and alluring calls.

‘Natural Born Killer’ has vibrato spread over with fretboard trembling and stabbing in like falls through lysergic wishing wells in-we’re not sure, since vocalist has a faintly Slavic tinge to her vowels which could be the old-time speech or a sign opf distant lands beyond the Karpats or any number of soft unsettling suggestions of lands where those wolves still roam. Then into a crescendo of near Spanish flamenco dancing string punches at its coda. Unfortunate then, that the groove’s otherwise so leaden with familiarity, having been revived twice already in the same key by dim-lit inn-singers in loose-cobweb combos and whisky-stained lips.

It’s a sound replete with the twitches of singularity which sadly succumb under a clear spot-light right as it leads you towards its chambers. Its memorised verse forms you can’t quite match to those burning eyes shining somewhere further within the bright gloom. But the potential’s there.