CD: Soap&Skin: Narrow [Digipack] (2012)

The expression ‘an old soul in a young body’ has been attached to
Anja Plaschg, aka Soap and Skin, more than once. The teenage
wunderkind whose 2008 debut album Lovetunes for Vacuum charted
all across Europe, attempted to look twice her age in the cover
portrait, and if she didn’t quite pull it off she certainly made a convincing
widow in weeds.

The double tracked vocals, a Plaschg trademark, are unsettling and
eerie, while the piano-led arrangements, owing more to modern
classical than run of the mill singer-songwriters, slips into appropriately
dissonant and discomfiting areas

Still only twenty one, Plaschg still retains the fearlessness of youth,
and if Narrow is more vulnerable than her debut then it’s proof that
self-doubt comes with experience. The young Austrian remains a
talent to be mentioned alongside Kate Bush and fellow farm girl
Polly Jean Harvey.