Susanna: Triangle

Strange, beautiful Nordic song cycle is acute, never obtuse.

Susanna Triangle album artwork

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Susanna is one of those rare artists who can be determinedly experimental while still producing material that radiates warmth and humanity, even at its most dejected.

The follow-up to 2013’s The Forester is a sequence of 22 exquisitely crafted vignettes. Some last a little over 90 seconds, a few seep beyond five minutes, but they’re all constructed with the care and precision of a poet. Rather than sounding sketchy, each piece resonates against the other. Recalling Talk Talk’s sparse syntax or the terse electronic ambience favoured by David Sylvian, the Norwegian’s songs congregate in discrete surges within a subtle production that often finds the angelic purity of her natural voice swarm into vast, tremulous choirs, or distort into disconsolate squalls. Wide-eyed with wonder, songs muse on distances both immeasurable and immediate. Yet amid the sonic and narrative ruminations are uplifting, reassuring moments: Texture Within, a tender ballad adorned with lonesome pedal steel guitar, and Hole, pulsating dayglo pop synth and swooning harmonies. With its capacity to nurture both head and heart, the music of Triangle is a gift.

Sid Smith

Sid's feature articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Prog, Classic Rock, Record Collector, Q, Mojo and Uncut. A full-time freelance writer with hundreds of sleevenotes and essays for both indie and major record labels to his credit, his book, In The Court Of King Crimson, an acclaimed biography of King Crimson, was substantially revised and expanded in 2019 to coincide with the band’s 50th Anniversary. Alongside appearances on radio and TV, he has lectured on jazz and progressive music in the UK and Europe.  

A resident of Whitley Bay in north-east England, he spends far too much time posting photographs of LPs he's listening to on Twitter and Facebook.