On the sleeve there\u2019s a stone torso. Something\u2019s bulging out of it, a muted black as if branded with fire. Or maybe it\u2019s alive, emerging like spores of mould? Take a closer look, however, and you\u2019ll discover a face gleaming from within the hollow figure like mother-of-pearl: Anja Plaschg’s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Plaschg a.k.a. Soap&Skin<\/strong>, there have always been cover versions in her repertoire simply because \u201cit feels good to escape from myself\u201d<\/em>. These songs are literally both disguise and hiding place. What was it Dylan said? \u201cYou only tell the truth when you’re wearing a mask.\u201d Plaschg’s portrayal of Agnes, the central character in Des Teufels Bad<\/em> (The Devil\u2019s Bath<\/em>, 2024) \u2013 set in 1750, produced by Ulrich Seidl, and honoured at the Berlin International Film Festival \u2013 reminded some long-time listeners of Soap&Skin<\/strong>‘s first albums: the desire to break out of village confinement; the breakdown of sensitivity towards others; the earthy, the morbid and the mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Without it being immediately recognised as such, there\u2019s been a cover on every Soap&Skin<\/strong> album since 2012\u2019s Narrow<\/em>, Plaschg\u2019s tentacles extending through every piece until a radio hit like \u2018Voyage, Voyage\u2019 becomes a parable as deep as a well. She first recorded that song, originally by Desireless, in 2011 for the soundtrack to Sebastian Meise’s Still Life<\/em>, and it\u2019s been part of her live repertoire ever since, metamorphosing with her over the years. Following 2018\u2019s From Gas To Solid<\/em>, nonetheless, rage and anguish have given way to more delicate arrangements, and in this new recording the development is layered, with the despair in her voice and the healing seemingly emanating from the brass resting on top of one other like transparencies. What results is a nuanced picture of then and now, and Torso<\/em><\/strong>, if you like, is an exhibition of what lies behind the masks of others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Mystery of Love\u2019 reflects their presence. Sufjan Stevens’ song, rearranged for French horn and trombone, admits us delicately into Torso<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s sound world, Soap&Skin’s<\/strong> voice quickly penetrating with its hooks. \u201cI hear a song,\u201d <\/em>she says, \u201cand feel there’s something else I’d like to add. Then I don’t listen to the original. Sometimes not for years. I record the songs from memory.<\/em>\u201d She hasn’t, for instance, heard old favourite The Doors’ \u2018The End\u2019 for over seven years, a time capsule, much like Shirley Bassey’s \u2018Born To Lose\u2019, about which she’s almost embarrassed today, but in her recordings she broadens their perspective away from the \u2018I\u2019 towards a \u2018We\u2019 that\u2019s born to lose<\/em>, one way or another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Known for her transformative power, Soap&Skin<\/strong> is frequently asked to reinterpret songs, so when Berlin\u2019s Danube Festival invited her in 2022 to perform all the covers she\u2019d accrued over the years in one single evening, she came up with the idea of a permanent collection. Thus we hear Cat Power’s \u2018Maybe Not\u2019, once performed by Plaschg at Vienna\u2019s Burgtheater for a benefit matinee to raise funds for Ukraine against the Russian offensive. It\u2019s a song calling on us to let things go, to relinquish the desire for power, and she accompanies herself on piano, with Torso<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s vocal track taken from the live recording of that very matinee shortly after the start of the war. In 2018, meanwhile, alongside Anna Calvi and Laetitia Sadier, she performed David Bowie’s Blackstar<\/em> in full in Paris, Amsterdam and Hamburg. With its slightly yodelling, slippery vocal, \u2018Girl Loves Me\u2019, now available as a recording, seems to have been written for Plaschg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Torso<\/em><\/strong> was recorded in Vienna by an ensemble under her direction. \u201cFor the first time,\u201d<\/em> she adds. \u201cIt’s actually more my style to assemble the music in a safe space, alone at home, from previously recorded samples.<\/em>\u201d Still, maybe what is created collaboratively must be recorded collaboratively too. She invited multi-instrumentalist David Coulter to let his singing saw fly through his associate Tom Waits\u2019 \u2018Johnsburg, Illinois\u2019 in as straight a line as possible. \u201cIt’s such an incredible love song, made up of so many chords in such a short time,<\/em>\u201d Plaschg comments. \u201cI think of my daughter when I sing it.\u201d<\/em> She loves Waits’ music, but less so the primal masculinity of his voice, and thus she transforms it into the very antithesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s Plaschg’s version of Lana Del Rey’s \u2018Gods & Monsters\u2019, the bonus digital track, that\u2019s undergone the severest makeover. Though its lyrics twist and turn, in Plaschg’s version the lyrics are twisted. Does Lana Del Rey still want \u201cfame<\/em>\u201d and \u201cliquor … slowly<\/em>\u201d in 2012? \u201cFame and liquor?<\/em>\u201d sings Soap&Skin<\/strong>. \u201cThat is nothing holy.<\/em>\u201d In Anja Plaschg\u2019s reading, what was once desire has become an offender whose hands are unwanted on her waist, and, thanks to experimental Viennese electro musician Asfast\u2019s beats, a topsy-turvy slow-core banger arises out of this sunny lethargy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So there they are, all the strands of a transformation, and in \u2018Stars\u2019, a ballad she discovered through Nina Simone, Soap&Skin<\/strong> ties them together. \u201cStars\u201d, it advises us, come and go: \u201cThey live their lives in sad cafes and online halls\/ And they always have a story.<\/em>\u201d And the latter endure, always ready to be spun once more as a yarn in which one’s own experience becomes accessible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11889,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"inline_featured_image":false},"class_list":["post-11893","event","type-event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n