Comparisons between iamthemorning and Tori Amos are so blindingly inevitable that we might as well shoo this particular elephant out of the room before it has chance to crap on the carpet, knock over the china and spoil everything. With their – yes, you guessed it – waifish, red-headed frontwoman Marjana Semkina’s clear, trilling, theatrical voice taking centre stage alongside Gelb Kolyadin’s deft piano-work, this Russian chamber-prog duo do little to disguise their main influence.
That’s not to say there’s nothing to recommend this little seven-track EP they’re putting out as a stop-gap between their 2012 self-titled debut and its eventual follow-up.
The pair of them come from a classical music background and it shows in the movement of the piano compositions, while rich cellos bring a chilly, dark fairytale quality to it all.
It’s more than a little bit cheeky to feature two versions of the opening track, The Simple Story, in a release this short, especially when the ‘chamber version’ and the ‘unplugged version’ are so similar, but we’ll just have to presume they want to keep the rest of the new stuff under their hats until the next long player’s ready.
