The Rheingans Sisters: Start Close In review – a radical leap into darkness

(Self-released)
With their golden voices, fertile soundworlds and evocative influences from across Europe, the Sheffield duo’s fifth album is admirably confrontational

An infernal, harrowing scrape begins Rowan and Anna Rheingans’ first album in four years: a bow gnashed against a tambourin à cordes (a traditional Pyrenean strung drum) joined by a distorted and octave-pedalled viola, creating a frightening undertow. The song is Devils, inspired by singer Frankie Armstrong’s 1978 version of the folk ballad The Devil and the Farmer’s Wife, in which she celebrates a woman taken to hell who fights back. The sisters’ voices sound golden against the frantic clamour: “The women are much better than men / Can go to hell and come back again.”

Five albums into a garlanded career, the Sheffield sisters’ work is getting more radical by the release. Inspired by the physicality, energy and intimacy of performing live, Start Close In is produced by contemporary composer and progressive metal artist Adam Pietrykowski, who helps shape its spacious but strangely fertile soundworlds. Its instruments and influences coil from across Europe, from Livet Behöver Inga Droger (Life Needs No Drugs), summoning up memories of a Swedish folk festival that mixes feasting and night-swimming, to the propulsive Si Sabiatz Drolletas, an Occitan-sung bourrée (a French dance) that tells women not to get married as they’ll regret it.