Jarboe
Anhedoniac

THE REVIEW

Jarboe was the unforgettable female vocalist of the Swans: a cult group of the Gothic alternative scene of the eighties.
Her shamanic voice did not remain inactive after the dissolution with Michael Gira and his companions, but, like a good schizoid, she produced countless remarkable works that even today we can happily purchase. One of these, which is certainly not the apotheosis of joy and gaiety, is Anhedoniac which in Arabic means "lullaby with flutes and drums".

In this quintessential evil album, Jarboe gives us her own distorted vision of the world and music... creating unthinkable and disturbing soundscapes, sometimes close to the Swans' experiences and some of Diamanda Galas's vocal excursions, although without possessing her vocal talent.
Here lies the real shortcoming of Jarboe... the lack of voice: that desire for catharsis and devastation so typical of Galas, which rarely arrives in these tracks, except in some daring and disturbing musical juxtapositions.

This album remains nonetheless an episode of great formal provocation, where the photos in the booklet, depicting Jarboe's vagina locked by a chastity belt, give the idea of what awaits listening to the CD: a deep and desperate Gothic scream from which one expects the ultimate scream that will never come... unfortunately.