Welsh Dark-alternative songwriter and artist Catherine Elms is back with the powerful new album ‘I Have Seen It, I Do Not Fear It.’ Drawing inspiration from a variety of genres and artists, including The Dresden Doll and Tori Amos, her genre-bending, emotive music has won over the crowds and marks her as one of South Wales’ rising stars.
Catherine Elms – I Have Seen It, I Do Not Fear It
Elms describes the record as her personal journey from feeling trapped in a life defined by fear and self-doubt to setting herself free and emerging anew. It’s an album that aims to give hope to the listeners, to know that there’s light for them too.
The album opens with the cinematic All I Want Is Everything, whose detuned chords and whispered vocals recall Nine Inch Nails for their intensity and gloomy atmospheres. This track sets the scene for the first part of the album, where Elms explores her darkness. The ending of this intro foresees the cathartic moment we’ll experience at the end of the record, but suddenly plummets into the aggressive and guitar-heavy “Frustrations”. The first half of the album is characterised by aggressive melodies and haunting songwriting, reflecting Elms’ journey throughout her darker sides. The almost orchestral ambience recalls Nightwish in their flamboyant staging of hard personal feelings.
The disruptive energy of Evanescence meets the generational angst of Nirvana in Sound and Useless Fury. This track is heavy, angry and the energy is perfectly delivered by the guitar riffs and almost screaming vocals. The verse “I have seen it, do not fear it/ You know I love to break my own heart” gives the name to the album and expresses how Elms looks at the darkness that keeps her trapped in the eye, ready to fight but unable to let it go.
The journey through darkness continues in Legs Crossed and Monday Eyes, where Elms replaces anger with a more stripped-down and reflective atmosphere. Truth Amongst Countless Fears marks the beginning of the healing process. The light piano chords and the echoing, distant vocals sound like a rite of passage. A breather after all the anger and fear have been released. It’s a meadow after a soundscape of darkness. It quietly transports us into Fire Song, which we could easily hear in a film when the hero looks back at how far they’ve come. Its slow pace and instrumentation happily balances the chaotic and guitar-filled first half. The album draws to an end with Good Day, Not Enough and Upside Down. In these three tracks, piano melodies and vocals are the real stars and we could imagine Elms conceived them as a long unique track. She explores her feelings of new awareness that the past and the pain have brought her.
“I will learn how to sustain myself” she says in Not Enough, acknowledging how something or someone is not enough for her. We can see this as a symbolic ascent to something more, finally understanding her value and rising above her fears. The closing track Upside Down recalls Radiohead in the moody ambience and almost fatality of its soundscape. However, Elms is positive, singing “not so fragile as I appear” and “how easy to lose yourself completely”, but how she found herself again against all odds.
I Have Seen It I Do Not Fear It is a beautiful work, that translates a journey that all of us face in our lives into music. Catherine Elms isn’t afraid of showing her thoughts and emotions in her raw and rich lyricism, which turns her personal darkness into something we can all relate to. Listen to the album all in one go and enjoy the progressive ascent to light and relief.
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Words Anna Colombo
