Another little miracle from Sweden. Promise And The Monster is alter ego of Billie Lindahl, a girl who released her debut album Transparent Knife back in 2007. She was immediately noticed. Four years later, we got Red Tide, and now the third dessert is prepared for our hungry music libraries. Feed The Fire is a conceptual album, mix of the 60s and dark sound. It is like you combine Lee Hazelwood and Nico. It makes sense because you can feel the 60s and the 80s making children with modern freak folk and dark folk.
Swedish girl made two worlds have sex and gave birth to a solid album. She said that the fire can be both constructive and destructive, just like life and death. Feed The Fire is exploring contradictions of thoughts and emotions, dreams and reality, etc. It is a landscape intertwined with strong emotions and visuals of skin, animal, body. Billie is investigating where is the line between humans and nature, and reality and mental sickness. She is not taking sides. She is just trying to make peace and find the balance between extremes.
Using introspection as a tool, Billie brings stories of both consciousness and unconsciousness and deconstructs the concept of reality. If you haven’t figured it out by now, this is a very refreshing and eclectic album.
The title track Feed The Fire has great opening line – I’m already too involved, I’m forced into the core. What an essence of the album - personal confession and effort to reflect emotion through dreamy songs and vulnerable vocal. Time Of The Season has prominent guitars. It’s the most memorable track on the album. Hammering The Nails falls somewhere between Joanna Newsom and Fursax. Weaker numbers are Apartments Song, Julingvallen and Machine. Everything is too repetitive, and the vocal is exaggerated. The rest of the album is just fine. If overall impression is spoiled by three tracks, it means it is a good album.
Promise And The Monster is an interesting musician. We can expect her to deliver many emotional records in the future.
