Capturing all the playfulness and innocence of Bjork and wrapping it in a dreamy, minimalist indie-pop bubble, Flat Roof House is all about textures and mood rather than structure and stability. Wistful reflections wander through a free form song where any notion of verse and chorus have long been replaced by meandering electronica, sweeping strings and skittering beats. There are some obvious comparisons, but where as the aforementioned icelandic pop pixie plays the unhinged card too readily and Natasha Khan seems too fixated by swords and sorcery imagery, Helene Greenwood operates from a real world position or at least the distant memory of one.
Back in the day a record like this would have found itself in the hallowed grounds of 4AD and have drawn words such as windswept and ethereal from eager journalists and why night, they may be a bit of a cliche these days but I guess cliche’s are often cliche’s for a reason and sometimes they fit.
And all this lack of excessive window dressing means that you find yourself focussing on Helene’s voice, technically sublime, clean limbed and sounding alluring even when singing of white kitchen units or highways zooming past. It’s a strange mix of the urban and the urbane, the domestic and the otherworldly, the matter of fact and the world of the imagination and I can’t think of anyone else able to pull off just such a trick so effortlessly.
