Somebody help her, please -- get this poor woman some Prozac or something so she can stop huddling in the corner wailing broken-hearted suffering. Whether you label it blues or Goth, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic's singing is so inescapably emotive that it very nearly borders on psychically uncomfortable. But then, who said that art is supposed to make you comfortable? Vajagic's music is unconventional, raw and haunting, but in the same way that all great art is: it challenges your crumbling boundaries and forces you to encounter something painfully real.
Fortunately, the music itself delicately counterbalances Vajagic's harrowing vocals. Simple, strummed melodies, fleshed out with haunting cello and tinkling piano, form a deliberately tempered backdrop, quietly supporting the vocal emoting. Similarly, Vajagic's lyrical content is barely noticeable. Her rendering of the words makes them seem almost primal, filled with painful longing which the words themselves may or may not convey. One certainty, however, is this: Stand With the Stillness of This Day is not suitable for listeners with suicidal or homicidal tendencies. Vajagic is too dangerously effective at creating sonic darkness for the album to go without a warning label.
