Slowcore in soul­ful contralto

The Canadian-Russian artist Michelle Gurevich manoeu­vres bet­ween gran­di­o­se retro and slow­co­re lofi pop. Strewn with fata­lis­tic lyrics, her songs are at once tra­gi­co­mic and rich in melo­dy. With her charac­te­ris­tic con­tral­to vocal ran­ge, she com­bi­nes humour with dark rea­lism in sul­try, inti­ma­te ballads. 

Gurevich first made her mark with ​‘Party Girl’, which would go on to beco­me her calling card. Now, with her sixth album, ​‘Ecstasy in the Shadow of Ecstasy’, we’­re tre­a­ted to more in this vein: heart­felt dra­ma, lyrics about lon­ging and loss, and a voi­ce that imme­di­a­te­ly takes up resi­den­ce in your soul. A kind of fema­le Leonard Cohen, but with more edge. Don’t miss her first ever show on Belgian soil!

Gurevich recor­ded ​‘Party Girl’ in her bedroom, but soon found her way to the coun­try of her ancestors: her songs were being play­ed on the yachts of Russian bil­li­o­nai­res and as ring­to­nes on the pho­nes of Ukrainian mothers. After that, she remai­ned extre­me­ly popu­lar in Eastern Europe and among the East European dias­po­ra, in the Berlin queer sce­ne and with any­o­ne who can appre­ci­a­te the melo­dra­ma of Charles Aznavour, Nino Rota or Nikolai Slichenko.

—–

as part of GIF, a col­la­bo­ra­ti­on bet­ween Voo?uit, CAMPO, KOPERGIETERY, NTGent, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen & S.M.A.K.