Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Christine Owman

What an unexpected pleasure from Sweden, this dark-folky, industrially-roughened Throwing Knives from the songwriter Christine Owman. Owman performs, frequently, in front of film projections, by the videos, much of it playing with traditional and non-traditional imagery of the female. Her album, too, seems unusually liberated (and liberating), celebrating the autonomy and self-expressive ability of a woman who defines her own place in her relationships.

Here's a bit from my Blurt review, which ran a couple of days ago.

Much of women's pop and rock seems to be primarily directed at men, packaging femininity in ways that confirm or overturn male-generated stereotypes. Throwing Knives comes at womanhood from the inside, painting a far more complicated, conflicted view that may or may not appeal to the opposite sex. That it's couched in beautiful, eerie melodies, sometimes delicate, sometimes ragged arrangements, and a dream-like vocal prettiness can only add to the conundrum. Christina Owman is certainly not going for the obvious.

More

05 Dance - CHRISTINE OWMAN by Christine Owman

2 comments:

Ian said...

I've got a promo of this somewhere, and now I think I need to listen to it.

jenniferpkelly said...

This is my big pleasant surprise of the summer. Robert Vickers is working it -- sure he'd send you a Dl if you've lost your copy.