Missy – Major Arcana (ARKH): Wormholes of mysticism, Album Review

Missy – Major Arcana (ARKH Records). Avante Garde Pop with a broad palette which opens out into graphic art, theatre and cinema. Wormholes of mysticism. An ambitious journey of an album for Abigail Knudson and her musical persona Missy.

Major Arcana is graced with a superb Dave McKean cover. Visceral red inside a womb. The head is fed by numerous branches of a placenta tree.

McKean also created iconic cover art for Neil Gaiman’s astonishing Sandman series of graphic novels. The story of the Endless multiverse and their principal players. Dream who provides the myriad worlds, and his siblings. Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium and Destruction.

Missy takes the role of Delirium, who is also known as Delight and Mania.

Major Arcana are also the 22 trump cards of the Tarot. Which traces origins back to ancient Egypt and on through the millennia to Kabbalism and Freemasons.

Paranoia. The music is full of hooks and given space. The sound becomes expansive. Seems to be addressing the suppression of the female spirit. Living with the enemy/ I’m your little toy boy Roy/ Something that will never be. The deep electronic bass drops are a signature feature over most of the songs.

Don’t Get Me Wrong. A voice like the Kate Bush of Wuthering Heights but sharper and more Witchey. Sounds like a classically trained voice with a controlled ease which can cut through without volume. In live performance, she can effortlessly raise the intensity along with the hairs on the back of your neck. Sounds like she’s casting a charm spell. I heard you’re quite liking me/ Don’t get me wrong/ This isn’t love/ this is just fine to me.

Quarter Life Crisis. Music becomes ominous. The electronic bass sound becomes a surgical saw which slices open the cranium. I’m just trash living on eggshells/ Depressed mind is real/ how did it go so wrong/ Get me out of the freak zone.

Hell in my Head. A little horror story. Scary violin samples. Different voices speak. Hell is in my head but only I can hear it. The hooks abound and a little bit of Prince-style Funk. Or Brian Eno.

Continues with Dark Side. Gasoline gas bag psycho/ Tell me you want to go over to the dark side/ See you on the dark side.

Conjures up cinematic images. The Doll Maker in Blade Runner. Expressionist art of FW Murnau and the original Nosferatu.

She Went That Way. Missy can sing in piercing fashion at the very top of the range. Just before she becomes some other creature. The percussive sound effects may get some inspiration from similar things that Lee Scratch Perry was doing in his famous Black Ark studios in the Seventies.  The shuffling galumphing Beatles Walrus rhythm.

Hypo is a scathing put-down wrapped in a beautiful melody. Look at that face no one could love/ Honey you’re a disgrace/ Everybody knows you’re a fake. The nervous energy in the music must mean hypomanic.

Heart Strings sounds almost conventional in this context, with a melodic string section in the first half. Lays a bed for a superb vocal performance heading off into that piercing top range.

I’m Bad. The violins sound like Laurie Anderson’s Born, Never Asked. Then a soulful voice which lifts the curses and darkness of the preceding songs, but not quite. In its own way it seems to tap on Michael Jackson’s shoulder a little. Why am I such a bad man? / Why am I such a scared man? / If I had a heart, I’d give it to you.

Electro Dream Pop which is brave and provocative, and looking to break out and venture into the slipstream. Instead of electric sheep this is what androids may dream of.

Rev Orange Peel

NB: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. By Philip K Dick. From which the movie Blade Runner was adapted.               

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