JOANA SERRAT
Catalan songwriter slays demons on soul-searching sixth.
By Allan Jones
Big Wave GRAND CANYON
9/10
Big Wave starts with a big bang. Atrack called “The Cord” that in a little over three pummelling minutes upends most available notions of what to expect from a Joana Serrat record, the song ending with its chorus repeated by a voice like something lifted from the soundtrack of a low-budget ’80s horror film involving demonic possession. Disconcerting isn’t quite the word, but it will have to do.
The precocious Catalan singersongwriter’s first couple of albums –The Relief Sessions (2012) and Dear Grand Canyon (2014) –mostly mixed handsome fingerpicking folk and country-rock. Tracks like “Flowers On The Hillside”, “The Blizzard” and “So Clear”, meanwhile, essayed akind of dreampop that recalled quintessential shoegazers Slowdive, whose Neil Halstead was aguest on 2016’s Cross The Verge, produced like Dear Grand Canyon by early Arcade Fire member Howard Bilerman, who’d been impressed by ademo tape Serrat sent him.