Promise and the Monster (Bella Union)
Soup Kitchen, Manchester
Tuesday 8th March 2016
Doors 7.30pm.
£7 SEETICKETS
Grey Lantern is delighted to present the debut Manchester show for Swedish songwriter Promise and the Monster, ahead of her BBC 6music session for Marc Riley the following night and in support of her new album Feed The Fire, out now on Bella Union.
Billie Lindahl, the woman behind the name Promise & The Monster, brings a vivid landscape to life on Feed The Fire, her first album for Bella Union. It’s a wondrous and haunting world, mixing light and dark, birth and death, mystery and imagination, awesome vistas and intimate detail. Lindahl builds an analogue and digital soundscape around her enchanting voice, luring you deeper into her wild world than ever before.
Feed The Fire was recorded in Stockholm, where Lindahl lives, at Labyrint, a small basement studio run by her friend Love Martinsen who produced the album and shares most of the instrumentation with Lindahl. “We aimed at combining the elegance of old Sixties recordings with something darker and more mechanical,” she recalls. “Like you would play a Lee Hazlewood song on top of Nico’s late Eighties records.”
Duality sits at the core of Feed The Fire, likewise the name Promise & The Monster. “To feed the fire can be seen as both constructive and destructive,” Lindahl concludes. “You keep the fire burning, the spark alive. But fire can kill you. Like life and death, it’s not really a contradiction. I think it’s necessary to be open to destructive forces if you want to live a life where strong emotions are present. To see, listen and feel is quite a violent and confusing experience, and I think my lyrics often evolve around that, blurring boundaries between dream and reality, and between sanity and insanity. To me, Feed The Fire is a concept album that explores those kinds of themes, from certain places and real happenings.”
