Rose Kemp - Unholy Majesty

is a mock debutante: she started recording and writing for her mother’s band, Maddy Prior And The Girls, and released a first solo album in 2003, ‘Glance’, which was typically folk and totally acoustic. But with ‘Unholy Majesty’, she obviously wants to take a new - electric - departure to make something novel, and it is undeniably a felicitous attempt.

The folk influence remains of utmost importance, especially through the use of strings, and of seemingly traditional melodies. But Rose Kemp has clearly been raised in the rock age, she listened to Black Sabbath as well as to Tom Waits and knows how to play the electric guitar. This time, she produces a new genre, some kind of folkish prog-metal, witty and bittersweet. And it sounds good.

Her voice is perfectly mastered and used with both boldness and sharpness. In the opening track ‘Dirt Glow’, vocals are high-pitched, witch-like and contribute to building a strange, tribal atmosphere, where the violin, paradoxically, is the sign of an outburst of violence. On the contrary, on ‘Wholeness Sounds’, Kemp goes down to a lower, rounder note, more powerful than ever.

Though the general mood of the album is definitely dark, eerie and nervous, there is also in most songs a touch of wit that has to be taken very seriously. ‘Nanny’s World’, for instance, is full of black humor, the kind that makes you feel slighty uncomforable. But good as well.

The simplicity of some compositions, almost a capella, recall the latest sacred music of El Perro Del Mar - ‘Flawless’, with disharmonic chords stroke on a piano, or the very calm and beautiful ‘Nature’s Hymn’. But it is when Rose Kemp becomes gothic that she is the most powerful. ‘Milky Way’, one of the best tracks, is terribly impressive; vocals are incantatory, painful and counter-nature. It leaves you breathless.