Our Broken Garden - When Your Blackening Shows Album Review

Album review of When Your Blackening Shows by Our Broken Garden released through Bella Union.

We first met Our Broken Garden - Danish singer/songwriter Anna Broensted and cohorts - earlier in the year by way of their Lost Sailor EP, a understated collection of rustic melody and alt.folk made special by the singer's smoky, elfin voice. Drawing heavily on influences such as Mazzy Star and the Cocteau Twins and providing the ideal downtempo foil to Bella Union labelmates Howling Bells, it was a debut that suggested greater things were to follow.

When Your Blackening Shows was conceived in an abandonded school in the Danish forests and wisely again uses Broensted's almost choral pipes to recreate that poignant sense of solitude and fragility. The problem is that the formula which made their debut a mildly diverting exercise in austerity simply doesn't stretch across a whole album. After The Blinding (Lost Sailor's standout) and the title track have slipped ephemerally by, the whole thing gradually glides to a graceful, but ultimately futile halt. The effect is a little like being smothered, in fact pssst - whisper it quietly unless some tweed-jacketed pseudo is loitering near you - it's actually pretty boring.

There is proof that even those who resolutely ignore the mainstream will eventually have their day - see The Shins and Modest Mouse - but Broensted will need to explore a far more diverse musical backdrop to find the public adoration her beguiling voice deserves.

Andy Peterson