Anna von Hausswolff – “Struggle With The Beast”

Tell me something. Answer truthfully. When you see the name Anna von Hausswolff, do you think “ecstatic, jazz-influenced nine-minute live-band dance odyssey”? I am asking this because I must admit that this description never once popped into my head. It didn’t even occur to me. You could give me one million tries to describe Anna von Hausswolff’s general vibe, and I wouldn’t land on that phrase once. Today, however, we get to hear Anna von Hausswolff’s ecstatic, jazz-influenced nine-minute live-band dance odyssey, and it’s fucking awesome.

Anna von Hausswolff, the Swedish singer and organist, generally makes dark, expansive, generally gothed-out music. On Halloween, she’ll release Iconoclasts, a new album that features collaborators like Ethel Cain and Iggy Pop. We’ve already posted von Hausswolff’s early tracks “The Whole Woman,” “Stardust,” and “Facing Atlas.” Today, she shares a giant fucking epic called “Struggle With The Beast.” I recommend it without any struggle at all.

It’s hard to describe “Struggle With The Beast” beyond what I said in that first paragraph. It’s built on a feverish saxophone riff from Otis Sandsjö, and it builds into a blaring, thundering groove. This sounds like dance music to me, but we’re clearly hearing from a live drummer who’s just going off, along with guitars and strings and beautifully evil organs. Anna von Hausswolf doesn’t even start singing until a few minutes in. She wails about being going through a manic episode and scaring the people in her family, but she belts those lines out with wild-eyed abandon. This music does not hold anything back. It’s pretty amazing.

I wrote this song after a close friend experienced a psychosis. There was something unstoppable and completely disconnected about her, as if she were living and reigning in a parallel universe of some kind. She was so far away from the person I knew, as if all of her social barriers had completely dissolved. There was a new, weird brilliance to her way of communicating and being. She had no filters. I’m glad she’s back to normal today, but it made me think of how vulnerable and complex we all are, and that there are layers of unresolved trauma and unspoken truths within everyone.

Check out “Struggle With The Beast” below.

Iconoclasts is out 10/31 on YEAR0001.