Album reviews: First Aid Kit do Leonard Cohen, and Evanescence make a welcome return
First Aid Kit pay tribute to Leonard Cohen on Who By Fire.
First Aid Kit’s live staging of the works of Leonard Cohen is both a tribute to pop’s drollest chronicler of the human condition and also a deconstruction of his work and his persona.
Sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg sing in layered harmonies on Cohen standards Suzanne and Sisters of Mercy in recordings from a March 2017 run of shows at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre. But they have come to explore the nuances of Cohen’s work as much as to praise him.
With Frida Hyvönen taking over on lead vocals, Everybody Knows becomes a lament for a generation locked out of the middle class and gazing down the gun barrel of a future of global warming and declining living standards.
Yet there is optimism too. You Want It Darker is reimagined as a lockdown-ready anthem: it gazes into the abyss and discerns, at the edges, a rim of light and optimism.
The Söderbergs of course find room for 'Hallelujah', one of the most covered songs in popular music history and a track that has had countless indignities heaped upon it. Here they play it straight and stripped-down. Wherever he is, it’s possible to imagine Cohen gazing down and smiling in approval.
Recorded largely during the pandemic and with the band scattered across continents, Evanesce’s first original collection in a decade finds the alternative metal group unmoored and seeking to make sense of the world.
Their coping method is an LP swirling with ennui and confusion – but shot through with hope. It begins with Artifact/The Turn – a feverish opener that also answers that oft-posed question: what would Nine Inch Nails sound like with Kate Bush on lead vocals? Here, finally, we have our answer.
As ever, singer Amy Lee is at the heart of the drama and she blends confessional dread – not a million light years from Tori Amos circa From The Choirgirl Hotel – with machine-tooled metal. It’s clanging and angsty – but with a core of whispered pain.
