Album review: Ljiljana Buttler

Published on Sunday 2 August 2009 22:46

LJILJANA BUTTLER: FROZEN ROSES ***** SNAIL RECORDS, £12.72

FEW CDs start as slowly and tentatively as this one does, with a spare, stark duet between drum and bass. And when Ljiljana Buttler's voice sounds out, you'd say it was a man, so deep and firm is her timbre. But as she deploys her art more broadly, you are drawn into a world of darkly mysterious beauty. She sways from note to note, and her acoustic band sways with her, in a manner at times redolent of New York in early Sixties cool-jazz mode. The vocal and instrumental styles may be Balkan Gypsy through and through, but there's much more besides in the way the trumpet, guitar, and violin sail off on their lazily decorous riffs.

As Chris van den Hoogen's excellent sleeve-note explains, her introduction to singing began with her sitting under caf tables in the little Bosnian town of Bijeljina, while her mother sang from the band stand. Her mother fell sick when she was 12, so to make ends meet Ljiljana took over her job. She progressed to Belgrade and became a cult, but in the Eighties that cult was blown to smithereens by the advent of turbo-folk; for several years she virtually disappeared. It's wonderful that she should be back singing more powerfully than ever: her austere version of Gloomy Sunday, which begins with a Vivaldian violin riff, makes a fascinating counter-blast to Billie Holiday's more seductive one.