Soap&Skin

Narrow Soap&Skin

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.