Ania: Secret Garden (AniaBmusic)
A strangely eclectic sensibility is evidenced on Ania Brzozowska's new album, Secret Garden, her second. Although Polish, a Celtic flavour pervades, a breath of Irish mellowness and charm with her delicate mastery of piano and violin. Assured and elegantly underscored, as though Tori Amos were in cahoots with Enya, you'll have an idea of the classicism at play. Not that Ania is a mere pastiche of both or either, she brings her distinctive grace and style to the ears of the listener. There's a flawlessly other-worldly feel to her music, but it remains grounded, earthed by sublime musicality. Her image is wrapped in floral motifs, and musical signatures sourced from other times, an approach of ancient modernity. Understated yet encompassing.
"Secret Garden" is a perfect opener, featuring a delicately picked harp. Shades of Caroline Lavelle echo and beguile this slow-burning epic. Ania's voice is subtle, never cloying on account of possession of an earnest earthiness. This haunting madrigal soothes the listener into her otherworldly vistas. If rolling piano motifs and subtle violin lines resonate, here is the perfect ticket with all its gifts of haunting refinement. Mannered but exquisitely accessible.
With "Another Day," there is a sparseness of piano, a lament that holds the delicate space it inhabits with a melancholy ambiance. As it builds, via a sadness of violin, the sense of restraint is palpable, as her vocals effortlessly glide, whilst underscoring and harnessing the fluidity of the song.
"Another week gone by
And not a minute too soon
Another passerby
Staring up at the moon."
"Reach My Shore" is a slow waltz imbued with a gossamer moodiness. A swirling of bells and piano, it broods and aches with gentle drama. A small slice of reflective perfection, perfectly judged and elegantly delivered. This aching beauty continues with "Autumn Leaves," a perfect capturing of longing, absence, and regret as winter draws in. An exercise in brevity, it has an icy warmth in all its piano-strummed ghostliness and sorrow.
"I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold"
A brave song to cover arrives in the form of Chris Isaak's masterpiece of failure and fatalism, "Wicked Game," bedecked in baroque refinement with delicate violin lines, it weaves a hypnotic web upon the listener's heart. Stripped of its lyrics until the last few seconds, she allows it to exist as a classical piece, an astute departure that works intuitively and eloquently. '"Love Songs" possesses the timbre and ache of early Kate Bush. Measured yet gently soaring, neatly scored with piano in a dance with barely borne violin and swaying vocals.
"Sound Of Silence" is one of those songs you'd assume should be left untouched, especially given Disturbed and their manful reinvention of it in recent years. Ania takes it back to a more medieval feel—a sense of older, more innocent and magical times, but with a world-weary aspect. As the violin rises softly over the elegantly picked guitar, there is restraint within the longing expressed, those elements of profound sadness. Dramatic in an understated way, it saunters and sails to a conclusion of gentle resignation and decline—a minstrel in a gallery conceit.
"En Aranjuez Con Tu Amor" by the Spanish composer Rodrigo, from 1939, becomes an epic soundtrack of ambitious proportions, awash with cello and violin, and blessed with an exquisite vocal take. Ethereal yet supremely magnificent via a certain consideration of restraint, it swirls and cascades, slowly building without ever bursting forth till the entire affair gently slips away. A precise and elegant revisiting. It closes the vinyl version, which is a thing of elegant beauty in its splattered elegance. What closes the CD, the acoustic version of an earlier song, "Reach My Shore," proves a perfect exit piece of vulnerable simplicity that encases the eloquent concision of her voice. Ania is a singer who is not fearful of space because she knows exactly how to occupy and harness it, a trait she shares with Norwegian songstress Cecilie Anna. All seems effortless, which is an aspect of the magic involved.
Ania could be described as Pre-Raphaelite for modern times. An elegant soul with a sublime lightness of touch. Her visual presentation has a floral intensity that suits and complements her deceptively gentle sound. With this album, her secret garden should be a secret widely shared and poorly kept—a breeze from the past with modern times in mind.