Anna von Hausswolff’s Iconoclasts opens with “The Beast,” an instrumental track built around a dissonant saxophone figure. It’s an unexpected start to an album that moves from this relatively simple introduction to more complex, cinematic songs featuring a bevy of vocal guests, including Ethel Cain, Abul Mogard, Iggy Pop, and Anna’s sister Maria. The sax reappears on tracks like “Facing Atlas” and “Unconditional Love,” often playing circular arpeggios, but vocals, especially von Hausswolff’s, are the album’s central focus.
As on many of the Swedish singer-songwriter’s previous releases, Dead Can Dance is a primary influence on Iconoclasts. The album leans into baroque maximalism, emphasizing epic, orchestral arrangements, elongated vocal reverb, and icy, industrial instrumentation. Elements of folk, doom metal, goth, experimental rock, drone, and chamber pop crash into each other throughout, yet producer Filip Leyman leaves ample room for von Hausswolff’s operatic falsetto in his spacious mixes, adding a soulful, human dimension to the album.
Iconoclasts is a marriage of opposites: automaton-like discipline and total abandon. “The world is full of shit/And full of evil,” von Hausswolff shouts on “Facing Atlas” as waves of sound swell around her. From there, she downshifts into the 11-minute, multi-section “The Iconoclast,” a giant, roiling, dynamic work made up of shifting strings, tribal drums, and discordant noise.
One of the album’s liveliest and most propulsive songs, “Stardust” is driven by powerful drums and a pure, round bass tone, but von Hausswolff’s voice cuts right through. It’s her voice as a songwriter, though, that remains the focus of Iconoclasts. This is a richly textured work that allows von Hausswolff’s hypnotic and inventive melodies to truly shine.
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