ALEXANDRA SAVIOR
THE ARCHER
30TH CENTURY RECORDS
“Seven years,” sings Alexandra Savior as her second album gets underway, “I’ve had seven years of bad luck and I’m just fine.” It’s a brave statement, but any self-deception is underlined by the defencelessness of the song’s almost entirely unadorned piano accompaniment, which sounds like it’s been dusted off in a deceased pensioner’s home while Spandau Ballet’s True plays softly in the background. The Archer is a break-up album, you see, and the 24-year-old Oregonian appears to have gone through the wringer. Crying All The Time would suit Peaky Blinders were Peaky Blinders a Gothic romance, and it doesn’t stop there: “I’m still crying”, she adds later on Soft Currents, her voice gently trembling yet abundantly rich. No wonder: on The Phantom, on which bells chime as though for a spaghetti western showdown, she confesses “I fell in love alone”, and But You is a quietly dramatic, soul-inflected heartbreaker which begins with her laying her weary head down on “the wilted edge/ Of a lonesome mattress”.