Anna Kashfi / Survival

Hailing from Manchester, Anna Kashfi play a plethora of styles, all encompassed in the term ‘Americana’. Signposted in their name, there's a tongue in cheek element that runs through the music.

The record's opening lyric, "I was born when you kissed me / I died when you left," is as emotive as it is melancholic, leaving the listener both entranced and enthralled; drunk from the potency of the overture, Survival maintains an authority, yet fails to repeat the dizzy of these initial moments.

No more apparent is this penchant for deception than in the lyrics. What appears to be subtle, cryptic verse unravels itself to be rather blunt assertions about love and life. So frequent are these cheap tricks employed that they render the lyrics laborious to decipher, like reasoning with the possessed.

Even the aesthetics support the notion that Anna Kashfi are charlatans; in the breadth of song form on the album - Satanic Blues, Bluegrass, straight-up Country, electronic R&B and alternative Folk - the band takes potshots at disparate genres. It’s not that the variety undermines the plight of the artist, but rather restricts the record's reach. The lack of fluidity keeps the listener at arms length, left powerless and passive whilst taking in Youngjohns’ musicianship and lending to the impression that the group are more amateur than auteur.

Anna Kashfi manage to occasionally break out from this Americana vacuum. ‘String Loop’, for example, could be a collaboration with Cathy Davey and is a staggering slice of emotive virtuosity. Track ‘1936’, an inversion of traditional British folk with stirring sprechtgesang vocals and building drones, sees the group engage in the dark art of atonality.

Occasionally, Anna Kashfi asserts a truly independent style that they would do well to exploit. Unfortunately on Survival they don’t, leaving the listener wondering what would happen if the band could produce something with clear consistency and concentration. For now, this question will remain unanswered but, in its own unique way, the band’s strangely seductive song-craft still makes Survival their best record to date.