The striking cover for Snow Ghosts’ second album gives a lot away about the content – for this is dark, driven and primitive music with heavy instrumental colours and occasional flashes of light. There is less focus on rhythm this time and the whole thing feels more ‘through composed’, meaning the album is best heard in full rather than taking chunks from it. That said, there are natural highlights, and the central track ‘The Wreck’ has some incredibly powerful and industrial noises. Singer Hannah Cartwright has a great voice for this music, and takes centre stage effortlessly for ‘Circles Out Of Salt’, which builds with impressive power, and ‘On Knives’, where the rhythm scatters like broken glass. The production is very good, and the use of a single violin in ‘Lament’ and fuller strings in ‘Drought’ give an impressive emotional punch to the songs. Because this is essentially dark music it won’t suit every mood – but ‘A Wrecking’ is enthusiastically recommended to those already under the spell of acts like Zola Jesus and Esben and The Witch. Snow Ghosts have laid down a marker suggesting they’re only just really getting going.
