Neo-goths with a penchant for soundtracks, particularly those of a noirish hue, Promise and the Monster, like so many Swedish musicians, appropriates British and American musical culture in forging a new sound. "We aimed at combining the elegance of old sixties recordings with something darker and more mechanical," says Billie Lindahl, who is Promise and the Monster.
Throughout, there's a strong noirish feel (Lee Hazlewood is one of her idols; he spent many years living in Sweden in the 70s), that combined with a cinematic quality and a retro western film score, but with a contemporary production sheen via the use of synths, makes Feed the Fire the hoped for breakthrough for this consuming artist. It's her third album, and her debut for the brilliant Bella Union label. You can also hear the influence of David Lynch on the album, a master of slightly creepy soundtracks that heavily hint at the promise of something macabre and disturbing. Similarly, Promise and the Monster merge the dream-like with the surreal ,and the actual, in imagining a story and a mood.
Recorded in Stockholm, at Love Martinsen's studio, who plays on much of the album, the music never over eggs the pudding when worked in conjunction with the dark undertow of the lyrics, which contains a great deal of violence and despair at its heart, albeit imaginary. Lindahl has recently said she was going through a particularly shaky period at the time of writing.
Lead track Feed the Fire exemplifies this approach, with it's gentle, wispy psychedelic rock vibes built on a simple acoustic guitar rhythm, and interjected with that harpsichord Get Carter keyboard sound, courtesy of composer Roy Budd, reverbed horse clopping sound a la Sergio Leone, and lightly crashing drums. The lush textures gently rising and falling as Kindahl sings “I’m already too involved, I’m forced into the core.”
Hunter also glides effortlessly along almost child-like, multi-tracked vocals, euphoric strings, reverbed guitar and the erhu, a Chinese violin, while the urgent Time of the Season features more open plain guitar lines, galloping drums and hard acoustic strumming, once again mildly evoking the wild west of countless American films, but filtered through a mildly eerie sound prism. Apparently it’s a nod to The Zombies classic song of the same title, but instead of their light-hearted approach to romance, Lindahl zeroes in on falling into bad relationships. Similarly, Apartments Song continues the western vibe as it gently canters along its idiosyncratic waves of analogue and digital sounds and textures, before easing into the mood piece Julingvallen, as it attempts to evoke the spirit of this isolated place in Sweden that her mum visited as a child.
Elsewhere, the shadowplay of Hammering the Nails weaves around a finger picked electric guitar and menacing tribalistic drums, with those harmonious voices once again acting as effective counterpoints, while Machines' tremelo guitar and Mariachi (are there many finer sounds than these trumpets in full flow?) horns evokes a darker Chris Isaak via the surreal mind of David Lynch in this song about the clash between humanity and the natural world. Closing the album is a superbly intense cover of the Lal Waterson folk song, Fine Horseman. With dreams and dreaming at its heart, the story seeming to be a dichotomy between life and death, hardship and health.
Feed the Fire/Promise and the Monster, in name and feel, concerns the duality of life and death. Fire/promise are life-affirming, and essential means of survival, but fire/monsters also equates to a violence and power. Here, the flames are flickering vividly and brightly, dancing with the devil as it were, but enticing us to dance along to.
Jeff Hemmings