Elena Setién doesn’t rush into releasing albums. This is her third in six years and her first for Thrill Jockey, who really seem to be expanding their palette at the moment, and so Basque-born but Danish resident Elena brings a kind of remote, subtle beauty to the fold. The songs contained within Another Kind Of Revolution‘ describe her love for everyday life and what nature has to offer.
Most of the instrumentation she takes care of herself, being proficient on piano, Wurlitzer, drums and violin. Guest musicians do appear, but they are solely to add some extra texture to what are already fully formed songs. The opener “The Wheel That Drives You” is a stately piano ballad that highlights Elena’s deep, measured voice. There is a secretive air to the delivery that is enhanced by the soft Spanish elements of pronunciation. Her piano playing is lovely and very simple, with the title track feeling like something coming out of the high plains in winter. Guest guitarist Steve Gunn adds some little Americana flickers that shimmer in the distance, like snow in the mountains.
Her voice is tempting on “Window One”. It feels as though she is trying to draw you towards something that is hidden from view. The sepulchral organ tones and echoey double-tracked vocal draw you ever upwards into some rarefied atmosphere that gradually recedes, until you can pick the silence out of the drifting sounds. There is a Mariachi kind of Tex-Mex feel on “Old Jamie” and there was just a little whisper of a xylophone-led Kristin Hersh lullaby on “Sail Down The River”.
Final track “She Was So Fair” is a story of a doomed young girl lying on the ocean floor which moves gently like the waves enveloping the heroine, Steve Gunn’s guitar once again infusing it with a deserved melancholy. Elena’s instrumentation is both imaginative yet sparse; no songs are overloaded, and each has just enough variety to ensure the listener is drawn onward through the album until the inevitable silence.
-Mr Olivetti-
