Rehearsing My Choir

"The Wayward Grandaughter" is about as conventional as this record gets, Eleanor's hushed spoken-word tales set to a St Etienne-style disco pulse. However, the deeper you get, the weirder and more abstract things become. "A Candymaker's Knife In My Handbag" drifts through passages of baroque piano, warped electronics, ramshackle drumming, Eleanor and Olga reciting dream-like poetry about zombies, meringues, and other surrealistic weirdness. Indeed, what could be a truly bewildering sixty minutes is rescued by the pair's clear family chemistry and intriguing vocal interplay: "Sometimes, memories are better off sung," decides Olga, before joining her granddaughter in a gentle vocal waltz. --Louis Pattison