Ariana Zustra plays both sides of the coin – she is a musician and a trained journalist (for the Musikexpress, among others). A mixture that rarely bears significant artistic fruit. In the case of ZUSTRAS, who has expelled the lowercase letters from her surname for her stage name, things are exceptionally different because on her debut album THE DREAM OF REASON she doesn’t hide her penchant for orchestral pomp behind self-imposed vows of coolness.
That doesn’t mean that their melancholic, sluggish songs, which, in addition to pointed drumming, focus on their unambiguous pawn, their voice, sound like Nightwish in pop realms. On the contrary: songwriting intellect, which is not stingy with references and direct quotations and is sometimes transported in Croatian and French, meets beautiful, by no means overloaded soundscapes reminiscent of The xx (“Walking On The Moon”), Austra (the title track) and other grandees of emotional pop music without coming across as mere copies. This is mainly because there is always a rather unique pathos involved. One that is so seldom heard.
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