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5
MUSIC
Marie Løvås
“All my answers turned into rain of soap bubbles”
Unsaid Records
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If Marie Løvås ends up as your new vice pop companion, that will be a good thing. It is not a given that everyone has caught the name from before, but the chances are high that you have already heard the almost cautious, bright and image-rich voice, and caught your attention in close texts in the Sunnmøre dialect.
With her second album, she now lands perfectly in autumn with songs such as “August” and “Siste trikk”, the latter with fine descriptive lines that “November came, November went/And she never made it to the last tram/They reflected in each other’s eyes and liked what they saw”. This is actually a typical fragment of text from Marie Løvå’s hand, an example of her good observation skills and her eye for the interpersonally close and thoughtful.
Marie Løvås from Sunnmøre
The observant will probably think that despite the dialect, trams rarely run in Sunnmøre, or more precisely in Skodje, where she originally comes from. Many years in Oslo have not polished away the dialect, but have given her a wealth of references from the capital that turn her songs into small reports that are often placed geographically in the city, be it in Telthusbakken or in Holbergs plass. This ability to write in the close and detailed, also in terms of location, creates both curiosity and concrete images in the listener.
“Alle mine svar blei om til sapepbleregn” is Løvås’ second album, and instead of singing into a tradition, you get the feeling that she rather sings out of it. Behind the personal expression and the lyrics’ ability for hints and melancholic images, one finds echoes from both Alf Prøysen and Odd Nordstoga, the ability to feel sensations and thoughts that are just as likely to lie unsaid between the lines as in the open. “Old wounds and old scars/Those who never became words”, as she herself sings in “Nål og tråd”.
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On this song, the quietest on the album, you also find images like “The last leaf holds fast/on an open stop/You who walked so still on tiptoe/Your heart is made of tripwire/Nocken will wake”. There are examples of everyday thoughts and impulses from life and situations that everyone can recognize, recorded as in the cafe chair or on the tram, and then processed on Haramsøya in Sunnmøre where this album took shape, and then recorded with producer and guitarist Henrik Lillehaug.
Løvås joins a new strong wave of Norwegian music, where we also find names such as Randi Oline and Julie Henrikke, and excels with original arrangements and an organic approach to the material, also musically. Here you hear the fingers stroke the strings, the breath in the accordion of guest musician Daniela Reyes Holmsen or Runa Husøy’s saxophone on several of the songs, among them the single “Telthusbakken sent i mai”, or the hair hitting the strings in Lise Sørensen’s violin and viola.
Next to Lillehaug’s guitar, the core of the band is Andreas Rukan on bass, Ola Øverby on drums and Bård Kristian Kylland on keyboards. Together, they can put power behind Løvås’s voice and approach, but just as often the whole thing feels fragile and cautious, like an arrangement-wise mirror of the content of the songs, what can unravel, what can slip or slip if the wrong words come out or a glance recedes on the millimeter
It’s incredibly well done, and the atmosphere in the songs, whether they’re completely down or more forward, creates expectations and images in a way that shows the strength that lies in the songs, no matter how cautious they are. And at the same time we find the concrete, such as a traditional café, cups of cocoa and coffee, a radio playing, rain, grass and an old sweater.
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Soap bubble rain with Marie Løvås
Just listen to “Don’t go”, about being afraid of the other person going, or has that person already left? As she begins to understand: “Crossroads always give an urge to turn”. Or “Amanda”, a song about the difficult friendship, from which, incidentally, the title “Alle mine svar blei om til soapbubbleregn” is taken from. In songs such as the aforementioned “Siste trikk”, which is the album’s most complex, or “Hundretusen hjertesslag”, she is completely down on the leather, on the bare strings that scrape skin, in the air between the fingers and keys, in the sound of the tram’s wheels against the rails .
It’s ethereal, slightly psychedelic dreamy and almost goes into the abstract and atonal before the transition to “August”, the most immediate pop song on a demo album that also has pop rhythms hidden in the heart valves.
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And speaking of heart, the song “Hundretusen hjerteslag”, which opens the album, has also been chosen by the Church’s Aid to be the soundtrack for their campaign in the run-up to Christmas. It has precisely the gentle stopping effect that prevents you from moving on unchallenged, that awakens the senses and creates wonder.
Marie Løvås’ songs have that effect. With the album “Alle mine svar blei om til sapebleregn”, she will be able to make many people put time on hold and listen to life passing by.
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