Album Review: Evelyn Ida Morris - Evelyn Ida Morris

Evelyn Ida Morris' debut step away from Pikelet fame invokes an incalculable amount of things: Amanda Palmer's piano, Nick Cave's film scores, a score of Guillermo del Toro films, classical parlour performances, performance art - punctiliously avant-garde and profound, most notably it is and isn't any of that, hewing closer to the calm heart of a maelstrom in the eye of a needle, something almost impossible to see and almost certainly unheard of.

In (re?)claiming Evelyn Ida Morris as an artist and not merely a member of a growing concern, Morris has dived directly into the heart of individualism in a frankly startling and perversely intimate way. It's welcoming yet obtuse and certainly not for everyone, which is subjectively the heart of it and the gnawing appeal it wields.

Every piece carries something cascading and desperate. A haunted timbre like an infectious susurrus blowing through the eaves. Everything is tuned to a maddening key - somewhere in the range of knife-sharp - and the percussion does pierce, but it's the occasioning of Morris' voice, dabbed selectively throughout, that truly captivates.

Evelyn Ida Morris has made something starkly, unexpectedly special: a melodious manifesto that offers an unadulterated glimpse into a single soul.