Swedish duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums have some very strong ideas about how they want to sound. As an example, both attended Gothenburg’s Academy of Music and Drama, but dropped out due to what they felt was the rather restricting methods of the place. They (Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin) married and started a band, and Heartcore is their debut album, originally released last year, now re-released this year on the Leaf Label. And they definitely show on Heartcore a penchant for wild and wondering excursions into different genres, but all the while through their own personal style.

Mariam’s voice often takes center stage with a very interesting mix of jazziness, soul, blues and an obscure twist and bend of pitch and tone that is quite undefinable. ‘Bird’ shows one example of this, drawn out syllables and inscrutable meaning start the track and by the end she has developed a 60s soul twang. ‘Doubt/Hope’ has her walking a line that doesn’t completely fall into off key, nor does she even approach conventional melody. There are scat syllables in the middle of the track, and throughout a beguiling low to high pitch walking-up-a-scale delivery. Then we get something like ‘The Ones That Should Save Me Get Me Down’, which sways from jazziness at the start and ends sounding like an old times gospel blues hymn. Most interesting of all are ‘Nakina’, that has overdubbed versions of Mariam’s voice sweeping through alternate speakers at the same time, with different takes on the central jazz melody line of the main vocal. And ‘The Window’ that uses Native American sounding chants, with words slowly pushing out through the distended syllables.

What helps to really set these songs into a different dimension is the austere nature of the instrumentation. Often we find just vocals and percussion, as on ‘The Way Things Go’, as if the central melody has been surgically removed, and we are left with a voice that is following some obscure route through a forest, with clearly recorded drums, that have had all funkiness, swing and blues dirt removed from them, following along. There is some other minimal instrumentation, such as anonymous stringed instruments being plucked (‘Pony’, ‘I Can’t Tell In His Eyes’), wooden and metal chimes, (‘A Story From A Chair’), piano and keyboard (‘The Battle In Water’) and accordion (‘We Hold Each Other Song’).This album is certainly different, the duo explore spaces around and between conventional ideas of melody, they delve into strangeness and sometimes reach a cold beauty. But often you get the sense of a far off concept that you will never really understand, and you begin to wonder whether that is because the center to this album has been sculpted away, much like it’s melodies, that maybe there isn’t much of a concept at all, just obscurity for obscurities' sake. And that isn’t enough, in the end. 65%

Links Wildbirds & Peacedrums [official site ] [myspace ]