Coming straight from Lingua Ignota, one may be confused at first. There are some comparisons to be made to 2021’s SINNER GET READY, in which American folk music sat beside her usual piano, and which also featured a religious tang, but as a whole it is very much a new chapter. On I’m Getting Out While I Can, a classic, church-y piano motif sets a tone, over which Kristin proudly and with a minister’s forthrightness declares that, ‘I won’t succumb to this world full of sin.’ All Of My Friends Are Going To Hell takes an early blues slant, sounding not entirely unlike a deeply threatening version of Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz, as it unsmilingly warns of damnation, While I Will Be With You Always creates a heavy drama from its sparseness. Ditto The Poor Wayfairing Stranger, in which Kristin’s skills with a piano – both in terms of musicality and being able to create a powerful language with the instrument that one cannot learn from a teacher – is brought imposingly to the fore.
Throughout, it is curiously enrapturing. Poppy and crackly and raw, having been put onto audio tape which was then manipulated and messed with, there’s a found-footage quality to the songs. Particularly when, as How Can I Keep From Singing brings things to a close, recordings of Kristin speaking in tongues are added to the mix.
As ever, SAVED! is a genuinely haunting record from an artist whose emotional articulacy is unlike any other. Creatively, it is an inspired idea, carried off by a unique talent. Artistically – that is, as a means of expressing something from within – it brings both a feeling of overbearing dread, and an honest sense of empowerment and reaching up for something, of shedding skin in order to find comfort. Lingua Ignota may have come to an end, but the era of Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter looks set to be just as special.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Emma Ruth Rundle, Michael Gira, Jo Quail
SAVED! is released on October 20 via Perpetual Flame Ministries
Read this: Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter: “My objective is to challenge people”