Sadness Is a Bridge to Love by Society of Imaginary Friends

a Review by Anna Maria Stjärnell

This group is pretty far out of the ordinary on their debut album. Louise Kleboe has a strange, kind of operatic voice at times and the music takes some weird turns.

Nursery of Dark and Light see Kleboe take on a nursery rhyme gone strange. Her tremulous vocals recall Lisa Gerrard here.

For Those Online has big orchestral sweeps and strings like it wants to be a Bond theme when it grows up. Kleboe sings cutely of Myspace and other online communities.

Night of Power is almost full on opera with singing in Italian and deep orchestral swells to back it up. It's a million miles away from Sarah Brightman's popularized versions of the genre and all the better for it.

A band with a name like theirs was never going to be ordinary and thankfully they are as good as they are weird.

Posted on April 8, 2008