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InsideOut Music [Release date 26.02.21]
There is no doubt that some of the best music is made as a result of emotional adversity. This explains why we cannot, perhaps, expect any great emotional pull from aged rockers who are more resolved to maximising their back catalogue and topping up their state pensions. Old rockers tend to be angry, or creatively impotent.
Anneke van Giersbergen is best known as the frontwoman of Dutch metallers The Gathering, whom she left in 2007 for a solo career. But in 2018 her marriage was on the skids and this has ushered in a particularly emotional, reflective, and heartfelt album. And it’s beautiful.
It’s never easy for front ladies of metal rockers to strike out on their own. There’ll either be an expectation of more of the same or a reaction against more diversity. Tarja has earned cudos for her more classical excursions whilst fans may long for her original Nightwish style, Anette Olzon tried a more mainstream album, (and a really good one), with little success and then went back to a more symphonic/prog metal arrangement.
Giersbergen’s approach here is some way removed from her previous albums. The opener ‘Agape’ is one of the best love songs I’ve heard for ages, percolated by a lovely string arrangement, whilst ‘Hurricane’ digests the turmoil in her personal life in the past couple of years. Not least she was involved with the band Vuur and took some financial risks to further their music on the road.
‘My Promise’ is simply superb, and enhanced as ever by Giersbergen’s alluring vocals, a seemingly Dutch disposition also conveyed by the likes of Delain’s Charlotte Wessels. This song is again enhanced by an entrancing string section.
A song like ‘I Saw A Car’ is deceptively simple in proposition but is very infectious in execution in a folksy sort of way – as is ‘Keep It Simple’ - whilst songs like ‘The Soul Knows’, ‘The End’, and ‘Losing You’ are straight forward out of love songs.
In a week that sees Arlo Parks headlining the Graham Norton and Jools Holland BBC TV shows and touted as the future of music (there’s no accounting for poor, disillusioned taste and at the licence payers’ expense), Anneke shines through.
Many will say that Giersbergen hasn’t really achieved the wider recognition she deserves. “The Darkest Skies…” may be the album of much more wider acceptance. Simply lovely. And for anyone who has loved and lost and loved again. *****
Review by David Randall
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