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Remember the first time you discovered Björk? How you marveled at the way her quavering nervousness could suddenly skyrocket into earth-shattering battle cries within seconds? Listening to Bell is sort of like that. “We wanna see it all explode,” sings Russian-born Olga Bell on ‘Housefire’, and as per her wishes, volatility is the element of this album that will never cease to send those little fireworks up your spine. Bell’s band echoes her crazed soundscape: Jason Nazary’s beats are as personal and sensitive as pencil etchings in a hidden diary, but he knows just when to pound the hell out of the drums, providing a perfect foil to Grey McMurray’s epic sweeps of airy guitar. Their music dances the line between dizzy sweetness (handclaps and playful harmonies flicker through the record) and pleading seriousness (Olga is a classical piano conservatory graduate, and her vocals are more sigh-heavy than laughing), but what is clear is that about two minutes into ‘Brown Bear’ you will feel like you’re watching the universe expand on fast-forward. And who wants to miss that?
