Rachel Zeffira – 'The Deserters' review
In a field like pop music where most are self-taught, the phrase “classically trained” can take on many meanings, from the I-passed-grade-five-violin to conservatoire graduate. But irrespective of its nuance, the phrase is almost always used to denote the occupation of some intellectual high ground at which hairy-arsed chancers with teach-yourself-guitar books can only gaze longingly. This “classically trained” musician’s songs are somehow more musically valid, their musicianship more complex; in the race to intellectualise every last facet of pop, “classically trained” is a panacea to help separate the important from the merely great.
With this in mind, it would be misleading to refer to Rachel Zeffira as simply “classically trained”. The sometime singer in Farris Horror’s Cat’s Eyes, now making her bow as a solo arist, used to be a professional oboist in a symphony orchestra, and was well on the road to becoming a soprano before realising she couldn’t be bothered with the sacrifices involved, and turning her hand to ethereal, wispy pop music instead. But for all the stylistic volte-face, the fingerprints of Zeffira’s deeply classical background are all over The Deserters, for both good and bad.
The good is at its best when Zeffira dips her toe into slightly krauty waters on Here On It and Break The Spell, where the rhythmic discipline and undulating synths compliment her upright vocals and rococo orchestral flourishes. When the songs are barer, though, the fussiness can be off-putting, and Zeffira’s delivery id more from the head than the heart, leaving an uncomfortable sense of displacement.
But it is album’s longest song, Star, that manages to be most contrary, compressing into one five-minute chunk all the problems and pleasures that the album provides: while the pace and movement of the song is beautifully controlled, and the arrangement impressively lush, Zeffira sings it with such stiflingly precise operatic diction, regimented accent and obedience that any passion or soulfulness is obscured behind the glassy delivery. It’s a shame, too – in the hands of Alison Goldfrapp, Beth Gibbons or even Romy xx, Star would be a very different, far more engaging beast, but here it is little more than an exercise in prettiness.
The same could be said for The Deserters as a whole. There’s much to admire in Zeffira’s crystalline singing and her pure, highly accomplished musicianship, but her background betrays her too often here: this is not a natural fit, and that mismatch leaves too much of The Deserters too buttoned-up for its own good. She has undoubtedly adapted her classical training impressively, but that proficiency only serves to suggest that perhaps some things can’t be taught.
6/10
