Ecce Shnak are keeping the momentum going ahead of Dandy Variances, their next album, now due in early 2027. Anna O is the third single so far, and it grabs hold almost immediately. It starts dark, with a tense post-punk feel, then quickly opens out into a very ’90s kind of alt-rock, with plenty of Pixies in the way the vocals and dynamics play off each other.
The contrast isn’t the usual whisper-to-scream thing, though. It’s far more theatrical. David Roush’s deep voice almost works as a narrator, while Bella Komodromos comes in from somewhere much more dramatic, pushing things towards opera, cabaret and an almost cartoonish kind of exaggeration. There’s a bit of Nina Hagen in that sense of making the voice part of the character rather than just another part of the song.
Underneath, the band sit somewhere between noise rock, post-hardcore and art-rock, with a tension that brings The Jesus Lizard to mind and a really physical feel to the playing. The bass is heavy and refuses to disappear into the background, the drums hit hard and dry, and the guitar mostly avoids conventional riffing in favour of dissonance, clipped chords, angular lines and screeches that almost turn into percussion.
The lyrics take a similarly strange route. Written by Robin Kneubuhl, David Roush’s mother, they bring together Anna O., the famous patient of Josef Breuer, and Annie Oakley. What comes out of that is a character shaped by confinement, other people’s expectations, violence and resistance. The video runs with the same idea, with Bella trapped in an old, crumbling asylum straight out of a horror film, complete with straitjackets and a suitably nasty atmosphere. Then Anna breaks free in a supernatural blast that sends the whole room flying and leaves her captors terrified.
Anna O pulls all of that noise rock and post-hardcore tension into something much more theatrical without losing the hook. It’s uneasy, wired and ridiculously catchy, like an art-rock band suddenly sharing a stage with a cabaret soprano. After three singles like this, Dandy Variances is starting to smell like it’ll be worth the wait.
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