Glasgow-based musician Elisabeth Elektra's debut album brings colour to pop

The record should send the Glasgow-based artist-musician into the pop stratosphere.

And while there are echoes of the cosmic pop of Empire Of The Sun and the day-glo femininity of Grimes, if the songs are familiar, it’s not because they sound like anyone else.

Rather, it’s as if they’ve lain dormant in your consciousness, only to be awoken by this smooth-voiced songstress.

From the high-energy pop of opener My Sisters to the kaleidoscopic fantasy of Scissors, these are bold songs which sound as if they have been handed down from on high.

A compelling performer, she has the otherworldly drama of Kate Bush, the epic grandeur of Marc Almond, especially circa his interpretations of Jacques Brel.

Elektra’s love of chanson, though rendered into sleek modern pop, can be traced to her childhood in France.

It was later, during a period singing with Keith Wood’s Hush Arbor’s project around a decade ago, when Elektra realised she wanted to write her own songs.

After first making music under the names the Sargasso Sea and Zyna Hel, Elektra then worked on the songs which would become her album with Miaoux Miaoux, aka Julian Corrie, back before he was Franz Ferdinand’s keyboard player.

The songs were honed with Sam Dunkley, a multi-instrumentalist from Hexham in Northumberland, where Elektra – birth surname Oswell – is originally from.

“Sam played all of my early gigs with me,” she says. “He needs to insure his ears, he’s so talented. I know I can trust him to get my songs and he knows how to give my vocals space.”

Giving her vocals space puts the spotlight on lyrics about esoteric symbols, magic and knowledge.

Her world isn’t the fearful Upside Down of Stranger Things but more a liminal place between the veils. It’s a more colourful world than this, and one where myth feels more veracious than everyday life.

Closing the record is a dance track inspired by the ancient Sumerian goddess of love and war.

Originally called Salome, the song came to Elektra in a series of dreams, she explains.

“I would wake up every morning and there would be another part of the song: the first part, the verse, the chorus,” she says.

“I called it Salome because that’s what came right with the words. But then I realised it wasn’t about her. I had written a myth of descent, of Inanna who goes into the Underworld. She removes something at each of the seven gates of the Underworld so she enters completely naked, without the clothes and jewels she had adorned herself with.”

Mercurial, the album’s title, refers both to the cosmic and the worldly lives of mortals here on Earth.

“Mercury rules Gemini, which is my rising sign,” she says. “I see the descent myth of Inanna as quite a Gemini story, of the more unconscious, darker parts of ourselves as well as the lighter, more conscious parts.”

She adds: “We live at a time where we want everything to be black and white, good or bad. Taking that down to an individual level, we don’t give ourselves much room for f***ing up.

“We have to acknowledge that darker side, I think, in order to move forward.”

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