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Susanne Sundfør
“Lovely is the earth”
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Susanne Sundfør’s last album “Blómi” was voted the very best album of 2023 here in the newspaper. She has not gone quietly this year either, with concerts in Oslo Spektrum which received top marks, there too. When she now tries to walk quietly, it still becomes so powerful that she almost blows the roof off. Sundfør has chosen a Norwegian song, that is, an originally German song but with Norwegian lyrics that everyone can understand. This is basically a year-round Christmas song, but extra nice right now. Nevertheless, it takes courage to do another version of precisely “Deilig er jorden”, one of the most thoroughly interpreted songs we have, Christmas or not.
Sundfør starts with a toothy and muted voice, a bright voice that breaks in dialect against a dark and massive background wall created by the thickest double bass strings of Ole Morten Vågan and the synth coils of Ståle Storløkken. We are talking about two of Norwegian jazz’s leading musicians, from the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra among many other projects, who bring out perhaps the very best voice when it is used as Sundfør does here. The production is innovative, the song otherworldly, yet it reflects the seriousness of the world right now, and with a range and an ability to rest in the lyrics that remind us why Susanne Sundfør is one of Norway’s very best artists.
Read also: This weekend’s new songs: Delara dances with “Snøsøsteren” and it’s spring for Kappekoff (+)
Linni with “Søvngänger”
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Linen
“Sleepwalker”
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Linni is out with a new album, “Søvngjänger”, and it’s one of the best things the prolific rapper from Bergen can add to the already mature pile of solo releases. Here Jonas Grieg shows why he, as Linni, or Handerre Linni, from Yoguttene and in recent years on his own, is among Norwegian music’s most distinctive voices, who constantly shine outside the genre, and who create moods, linguistic images and small assaults on the sensory apparatus that few others. “Søvngjänger” deserves to be heard, as a work in itself, full of impulses, ideas and references backwards to his own catalogue.
“Oase” was the first single, and is a slow-moving, strumming love song like it’s never been made before. But here there is a further flurry of songs that grow with each listen, including “Bah si meh hor”, the almost halter-hard “Skyar”, and the downright wonderful “Løp jommi løp” – a new Bergen rap anthem that reminds us that Linni learned the subject from listening to street rap. At the same time, it is a beautiful example of him creating soundscapes like no other, with elements of mega-sløy jazz, electronica and touches of straighter pop.
Not to forget the devilish twinkle in his eye and his sense of the close things, preferably those from yesterday, such as when he turns “Midtnytt” into an off-piste Little Saturday pastiche. That song is an example of the backward-looking thing on this album, a psychedelic laid-back affair with lyrics that leave you shaking your head. Linni knows the art of juggling language, jargon, slang, voice and stamina, and the humor is so dry at times that you wonder what has happened to Bergen. But most of all, “Søvngjänger” has a musicality that turns even the strangest songs into small elegant and whimsical works in themselves, but with an underlying intensity in a well-crafted production that looses them into the larger whole that characterizes this record.
Read also: Jacob Collier in Oslo Spektrum showed his genius in full display (+)
Norsk Råkk steps on with energy
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4
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Norwegian Råkk
“Energy”
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In times like this, it’s good to hear that someone still holds the Norwegian rock fan in high esteem. The band Norsk Råkk from Moss and Østfold has come and gone in recent years, and since 2021 it has been a bit quiet from that side. Now it’s over, and they’re literally back with “Energy”. Now the synths are on, the guitar scoop plows away all the plaque and the vocals are classic Norwegian rock, so to speak.
This band stands on the shoulders of the golden age within the genre, such as Raga Rockers, Jokke and Valentinerne and a good dose of the garage rock bands that have come and gone down the E6 towards the Swedish border. “Energi” is also the title of the EP which brings together the title song and the songs “Firkantverden” and “Magnetisme” which came out earlier this autumn. They are decidedly more genre-squared than “Energi”, which stands out as the start of a new chapter from the band, who unsurprisingly mutter that their sixth album will arrive in 2025, four years after its predecessor.
Kalandra calms down with “Ghosts”
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5
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Calandra
“Ghosts”
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One of the most progressive bands in Norwegian melodious hard rock and metal with folk references is Kalandra. After an active year with, among other things, a massive European tour, they calm down a lot with “Ghosts”, which is referred to as a winter song. And it is chilly and beautiful like a fine December morning, one of those that never quite let go of the light. Kalandra vocalist Katrine Stenbekk herself says that “I imagined Enya meeting Type O Negative — a dark but peaceful contrast”, and with that the band’s inspiration lies. Here in the form of ethereal and sonorous vocals over vast landscapes, and acoustic leads where the heavy, dark and tough metal rock usually lies rumbling beneath.
Earlier this year, the second album “A Frame Of Mind” was released, while their version of Wardruna’s “Hell” continues to win new audiences. This new song will also be able to give them a foot into a wider market. On “Ghosts”, the instrumentation is dreamy and spherical, almost meditative, with softer strings and Stenbekk’s sonorous vocals throughout. “Wintertime whispers softly at my door/Within myself the old traditions flow/from somewhere ancient”, she sings, like a thin layer of rhyme over the lines of thought.
Read also: NRK’s new series “Ora jaska” stands firmly on its own two feet
Go bold with “Rebel Heart” in Netflix’s “Arcane Season 2”
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5
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Bold
“Rebel Heart”
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Norske Djerv are somewhat legendary in Norwegian metal, a rock beast founded on former Animal Alpha vocalist Agnete Kjølsrud’s voice and the interaction with drummer Erlend Gjerde. The two still form the backbone of the band, which gained a foothold in the gaming community with the hit “Get Jinxed” for League of Legends, made especially for Jinx. The song is up in the nine-digit number of streams, but now they are outdoing themselves with the new single “Rebel Heart”, which can be heard in the fourth episode of “Arcane season 2”, the series that went straight to the top on Netflix.
This weekend the entire “Arcane League of Legends: Season 2 (Soundtrack From The Animated Series)” will be released, and Djerv’s song already has over half a million hits on Spotify. It’s a cheerful pill driven forward by Kjølsrud’s primal scream of a vocal, which accompanies the figure Jinx again, and which she balances perfectly against something softer that helps make both the song and the expression melodious, epic and magnificent.
Djerv was away from the scene for quite some time, before they made a comeback during Tons of Rock in 2019, while Kjølsrud has guested on both Enslaved and Gåte on his own. The guitarist in Fixation, Martin Stenstad Selen, contributes to this song as producer and co-songwriter. He adds a lot that makes this a guaranteed international genre hit in the span between hard rock and angry metal, with a core of something fatefully sad deep in there somewhere.
Read also: Queens of the Stone Age return to the Island Festival
Synne Sørgjerd with a Christmas wish
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5
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Synne Sørgjerd
“Kind this year”
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Yes, that is the question these days, “Kind this year”? Synne Sørgjerd obviously has her own twist on this, of course, she wants someone who does what she says, “who says it’s me he wants”. The tree is decorated and dinner will soon be ready, but “where are you now?” sings Synne Sørgjerd in a familiar way, bubbling with subtle and self-deprecating humor over a pop rock accompaniment that really exudes alternative Christmas joy.
Synne Sørgjerd has spent the year well, with a number of good songs, the EP “Beige, tam og middels mann” and a couple of concerts under Bylarm which gave her lots of new friends. “Snill i år” is a semi-romantic dream that actually crashes into reality, as it often does in Sørgjerd’s songs, this time in a cheerful and hopeful song with underlying melancholy. And best of all, this is a Christmas pop rock song that hits all the right buttons and can have a really long life on wish lists.
Read also: Three evenings with the next big ones – see the pictures from Bylarm 2024
Christmas with Aden Foyer
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Aden Foyer
“Christmas Reminds Me”
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A year ago, Aden Foyer invented the smoking jacket and slippers before Christmas, then with the crooner “Your Face On Christmas Day”. Now he and fellow songwriter/producer Paul Hers add even more bells and playful choruses and Christmas twists, in the over-nostalgic “Christmas Reminds Me”. The text is mostly a compilation of all classic British and American Christmas carols, but underneath lies the seriousness and sadness, which reminds that this Christmas is not all that it should be either, whether in the immediate circle of friends or in the world.
Also about a year ago, Aden Foyer won “Breakthrough of the Year” during the P3 Gold award, not undeservedly and not at all because of the Christmas carols. Jonas Engelschiøn Mjåset, as he is called, is a gradually matured songwriter for others and an artist who has moved from the hyper-commercial to creating retro rock gems with large events. “Christmas Reminds Me” is an extension of this, a Christmas stocking of a song that right now in November is a bit too Christmassy, but who knows if it will melt into the big mix in a couple of weeks.
Also read reviews of new songs: The honey children tear at the soul and Vaarin lies awake