Vök – Figure (Nettwerk Records)
LP / CD / DL
8 / 10
28 April 2017
Some albums are difficult to review, not because they are
unlikable but because they are just, well, great to listen to. Figure by Vök is one such album. Call it dream-pop, call it alternative pop,
call it whatever you like, maybe just call it a quite lovely listen.
Vök hail from Iceland and it would be unfair to compare them
to any other artist from the country, That
said, there are often similarities in vocal style from Margrét
Rán
to one Bjork and sometimes the music is as dreamy as Emiliana Torrini’s
stunning debut Love In The Time Of Science, sometimes it’s just a quartet
making fabulous sounds.
Produced by Brett Cox (recent nominee for Young Producer Of
The Year), Figure follows EPs Tension (2013) and Circles (2015). The album is clinically pure, shiny pure and
full of whispers, echoes and dreamy melodies that swirl and delightfully spin
around for long after the album has ended.
It is in many ways, an absolute triumph.
Rán claims that the album claims the album is ‘about anger, obsession,
negligence, death, love, happiness and hope’ but it’s hard to feel anything that
complete adoration. There are no
feelings of ill on Figure, it’s pure joy.
Current single Show Me is infectiously addictive – it ups the tempo
slightly with cavalcades of guitars and drums which seem loud but distant at
the same time, synths effects reverb in and out and a simple bass underpins the
whole creation. It will undoubtedly attract
radio play.
The following track Crime, feels darker but still retains
the innocence that pervades throughout the ten tracks on display. It could almost drift into some sort of
Europop trite but resists beautifully, it often reaches climatic proportions
then holds back for one more surge, it feels sexy, it feels bleaker, and it
even has a hook that sounds like a Bond movie brass section.
Where Figure often succeeds is in its unwillingness to
compromise. Let yourself free with this
album and you’ll just ‘feel’ it. It isn’t
often an album comes along that allows the listener to wallow in delight and
magic, but this one does. It’s just
lovely.
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