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Savior isn't her real name, right?
Wrong. Savior is genuinely this Portland singer-songwriter’s middle name. And true to her name, she’s here to save us from beige pop music.
How is she doing that?
It helps that her songs have a feeling of pure magic about them, all supreme elegance and old Hollywood glamour, even when she’s flippantly singing lines such as ‘We sing songs about whatever the fuck she wants’, in ‘Mirage’.
Is she the new Lana Del Rey?
There are certainly similarities, but where Del Rey is mostly fuelled by stories of tragic love, Savior opts for playful character studies. Sometimes those are tales of romance, but they’re also full of wry humour, as in the ever-relatable ‘Shades’: ‘Like when you’re looking for your shades/Rifling through your pockets/And you find them on your face.’ We’ve all been there.
Okay, I'm intrigued. Tell me more.
You might have heard her name in passing before, specifically around the release of The Last Shadow Puppets’ second album, ‘Everything You’ve Come to Expect’, last year. She co-wrote one of that record’s highlights, ‘Miracle Aligner’, with Alex Turner, who also worked with her on her own exquisitely titled upcoming album, ‘Belladonna of Sadness’.
Impressive. So is the new album basically 'Everything You've Come to Expect' part two?
In a word, no. It does share that very laidback Californian vibe ghat makes you feel like you’re cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway or through the desert. But it’s also full of its own unique moments, from the eerie air of ‘Audeline’ to the yawning beauty of ‘Girlie’.
'Belladonna of Sadness' is out on Fri Apr 7. Alexandra Savior plays Oslo on Apr 26 and Scala on May 30.