Black Hole Heart – Sarah Donner (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Having come to Sarah Donner’s work initially through her Kitten’s Slay Dragons album Big, Big, Heart, it was interesting to experience her away from those more recent electronic experimentations and synth-pop drives. But what initially strikes me is that even though this album is built from more traditional strings and piano sounds, the vibe isn’t radically different.

 
Okay, one album bleeps and bloops whilst the other washes and chimes, but the same quirky pop sensibility inhabits the songs, the same idiosyncratic touches are present, the same lack of respect for how other people do things, the same blend of the profound and the profane.

More than anything it is the fact that the songs exist for all the right reasons. Stories that need to be told, anecdotes meant for amusement: genres shift, expectations are subverted…this is music just to be experienced and enjoyed for its own sake. Isn’t that how it should be? And ironically despite its refusal to conform to the rampant commerciality of the modern music market, or perhaps because of it, this collection of songs contains some of the most accessible, infectious and joyous tunes I have heard in a long while.