Promise and the Monster's most recent album, Feed the Fire, is the band's debut on Bella Union. Billie Lindahl, the Swedish artist behind the moniker, uses her songwriting to examine the opposite but intertwined ideas of creation and destruction on her third LP.
"To feed the fire can be seen as both constructive and destructive," says Lindahl. "You keep the fire burning, the spark alive. But fire can kill you. Like life and death, it's not really a contradiction."
The tone of each song, be it dark and detached or simply mysterious, is dictated by Lindahl's inflection. Her voice, in no need of the digital enhancement, is often tinged with the gloom of someone who's seen too much. She's known despair, and here, she synthesizes it with languishing guitar and galloping drums.
Between "The Weight of It All" and the nightmarish "Hunter," the instrumental "Julingvallen" shines a glimmer of light in the dark. An homage to fables still drives her work — Promise and the Monster, by Babette Cole, is a self-illustrated children's book from 1981 about a pony saving a kidnapped monster — but it's Lindahl's multi-instrumental talent and ominous vocals that take centre stage on Feed the Fire, an album that leads the listener through a grim landscape punctuated with urgency and violence.
(Bella Union)"To feed the fire can be seen as both constructive and destructive," says Lindahl. "You keep the fire burning, the spark alive. But fire can kill you. Like life and death, it's not really a contradiction."
The tone of each song, be it dark and detached or simply mysterious, is dictated by Lindahl's inflection. Her voice, in no need of the digital enhancement, is often tinged with the gloom of someone who's seen too much. She's known despair, and here, she synthesizes it with languishing guitar and galloping drums.
Between "The Weight of It All" and the nightmarish "Hunter," the instrumental "Julingvallen" shines a glimmer of light in the dark. An homage to fables still drives her work — Promise and the Monster, by Babette Cole, is a self-illustrated children's book from 1981 about a pony saving a kidnapped monster — but it's Lindahl's multi-instrumental talent and ominous vocals that take centre stage on Feed the Fire, an album that leads the listener through a grim landscape punctuated with urgency and violence.