On the surface, Blood from a Stone,
Hanne Hukkelberg's third album, may be her most direct work so far, slotting more neatly and readily into a recognizable genre type -- call it dark, shoegazey, post-punk-derived art rock -- than either of her previous albums, and making prominent and comparatively conventional use of electric guitars, without abandoning her distinctive found-object approach to orchestration.
Hukkelberg's music has always required repeated and attentive listening for the nuances of its elliptical melodies and intimate sound-worlds to seep through. She's always been an artist who works in shades of gray, and Blood is close to a gunmetal smear, drawing explicit inspiration from the likes of
Sonic Youth,
Siouxsie and the Banshees, and
PJ Harvey,
Hukkelberg seems less interested in those artists' visceral urgency than their sonic grittiness. Blood gestures toward post-punk's primal edginess, particularly in its brutalist percussion tactics (freezers and stoves, clogs and rocks, no traditional drum kits), although her remarkable voice is put to notably less expressive use this time around. Still, things start out strong, with the lush, gauzy "Midnight Sun Dream," the swaggering title track, and the driving "Bandy Riddles," which boasts the album's most sprightly melody. From there on it's heavy going, although the songs remain respectable and even potent on a tonal and textural level, with some undeniable moments of beauty and strangeness. ~ K. Ross Hoffman