When the sun’s tentacles reach down from heaven and thaw my frozen tongue

I’ll have a voice that’s all my own…

Photo taken by Fiaz Farrelly

out of waste bodies rise
out of flesh nectars bloom

-from What Should We Leave for the Monster Tonight? by Toronto-based Clara Engel

Today I’m listening to indie musician Clara Engel. Clara is a guitarist, singer, songwriter and visual artist (all of the fantastic images in this post are hers). The original plan was to write a review just for her album Visitors Are Allowed One Kiss, but I couldn’t not include the various fantastic images and songs that I found elsewhere, so this has become more of a post on the work of Clara Engel.

Listening to Clara Engel’s music is a tad like listening to anxiety… not her anxiety, but a stand-alone anxiety that doesn’t necessarily belong to any one person. The songs are haunting with a slight threat of violence, like a toned-down and more melodic IX Tab… but IX Tab disturbs me and Engel doesn’t. This is a good thing.

I think my favourite song so far has to be What Should We Leave for the Monster Tonight? (a bowl of mushrooms and milk apparently). The song has a gorgeous droning quality to it and wonderfully poetic lyrics (above). It’s brand new (last month) and you can listen to and buy the full digital album here.

Ghostly voices echo and prolong strings of lyricism. Theremins and marimbas billow into the head and cloud the power of reason, like a fog that obscures the path of recovery. – ATTN

The Moon is Covered in Snakes. An older song from Clara, filmed “In the glowing cove”…

This one reminds me of The Handsome Family a little.

I hope you’ve enjoyed discovering the work of Clara Engel as much as I have!

Follow Clara on Twitter and on Facebook.