“This girl is going to be huge!” When Courtney Love first said this about Alexandra Savior way back in 2012, the statement didn’t really make many waves. Yet over the years and after every successive release, she has begun to establish her presence on the scene, especially when, after appearing on The Last Shadow Puppets’ album Everything You’ve Come To Expect (she is Alex Turner’s protégé), she released her first opus in 2017 entitled Belladonna of Sadness, which was actually recorded between 2014 and 2015. The American singer from Portland was quickly labelled as a darker version of Lana Del Rey. Her second album, The Archer, released in early 2020, further underlines their differences. Releasing the album on 30th Century Records, Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse's record label and with Sam Cohen on production (the experimental brain behind Kevin Morby’s latest work), the operative word to describe this newer work remains dark. It’s certainly mesmerising (that voice!), but never depressing. The Archer’s cinematographic pop is reinforced by a core of bass, sometimes cold wave, Gainsbourg-esque even. Artistically similar to Hope Sandoval, Aldous Harding, Fiona Apple, Jessica Pratt and of course Lana Del Rey, she has a tendency towards vintage textures, especially those from the 60s (Can’t Help Myself). The melancholy of her pop is never artificial, and her songwriting has also matured well, the compositions of this second album going up a notch. She may not be huge just yet, but she’s certainly getting there! © Marc Zisman/Qobuz