Album Review: Deep Throat Choir - 'In Order To Know You'

There is something joyous and powerful when a host of human voices come together and blast into orbit. The old masters knew that when they penned opera choruses, voices raised together to the heavens, or at least the cheap seats in the gods, and so does Luisa Gerstein, previously from Landshapes and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, and now the driving force behind Deep Throat Choir.

While their debut, 2017’s Be OK, was largely comprised of covers, In Order To Know You is the sound of the collective creating their own, original music, and the results are often extraordinary. The textures are warm and fuzzy, from the gorgeous opener and lead single ‘Alchemilla’, through the strings-driven ‘Picturing’ and the jazzy, brass-inflected ‘Firefly’ to the floaty sway of the title-track.

On the lovely ‘Unstitching’, the listener is enveloped by a sea of voices over a tremulous melody that gently hooks you into its warm embrace.
 
‘Uvas’ (grapes) is a soulful stomp about the Colombian tradition of eating twelve grapes on New Year’s Eve and making a resolution with each one, while the staccato rhythm of ‘Lighter’ contrasts with the sweet vocal. Pick of the bunch is the delicious ‘Patience’, which sounds like Daughter jamming with London Grammar in your boxroom. Beautiful.

Listen: ‘Patience’

In Order To Know You is out now via bella union: