Retribution

Impossible not to think of the uncontrollable grunts and moans particular to the female body when listening to Retribution. The Inuit tradition of throat-singing — a two-woman performance of guttural call-and-response — fuels this album (and her three albums prior), but not only for the way it paeans her heritage. Depending on the song, womanhood is palpably there: tracks can be orgiastic (whimpering, climaxing) and puerperal (straining, almost painful). Ceaseless images of birth, pleasure, and pain frame an understanding of Tagaq as an artist interested in the integrity of the extremes inherent to all three.