Wildbirds & Peacedrums - Heartcore (The Leaf Label, 2007)

Wildbirds & Peacedrums are a rare specimen in my music library: incredible Swedish music. Moreover, they are one of the most instantly refreshing acts I've heard in the last few years. If there was such a genre as "vocal expressionism" (although I'm sure there actually is, especially in today's increasingly ambiguous musical climate), Wildbirds & Peacedrums would certainly be at its forefront, at least as far as contemporary indie artists go.

Heartcore, the band's debut LP, features standard chamber pop instrumentation used to minimal effect, although the album's focus is on the masterfully complementary interplay between Andreas Werliin's array of idiosyncratic, often avalanche-like drum patterns and wife Mariam Wallentin's breathtakingly powerful and spellbinding voice. Wallentin stretches her voice in all imaginable ways, cresting and troughing without much restraint, much in the spirit of Icelandic voice-collage artist Bjork. The majority of Heartcore, including "The Way Things Go," "Bird," "Lost Love," "The Window," "Nakina" and the partially a cappella "The Ones That Should Save Me Get Down" (a song that bleeds buckets of soul) is entirely drum-and-voice.

Heartcore's standout track "Doubt/Hope" is also entirely drum-and-voice and perhaps the best example of how much fire Wildbirds & Peacedrums can fuel with voice and drums alone. The song's emphatic, erratic cacophony most succinctly captures the duo's frenetic, bare-bones energy. Conversely, Wallentin can also be sweet, barely rising above a coo or even a whisper on "A Story from a Chair" or lulling on "I Can't Tell in His Eyes," possibly the most conventional song and tender moment on the album.

Despite songs like "I Can't Tell" and closer "We Hold Each Other Song," however, an overall palling sense of emotional strife similar to that which has incensed so much of PJ Harvey's and My Brightest Diamond's works still pervades Heartcore: hear "Bird," for example, on which Wildbirds & Peacedrums seem to struggle to contain or direct their volatile inner turmoil.

Heartcore is a truly unique album amidst a tepid musical climate wherein conceptions of minimalism, especially with the advent of new musical technologies, increasingly associate the aesthetic with electronic drone music. Heartcore flawlessly demonstrates that raw, at times seemingly improvisational energy and technical skill can be compromised to unique emotional effect and resonate with listeners on the most primeval of levels.