After the multi-guest infused and genre-hopping outburst of 2023’s Mirage, Norwegian guitarist and composer Oddrun Lilja returns with a more personal dive into her own history to bring eight fresh compositions out into the open.
Surrounding herself with the core group of Beate Lech on vocals and synth, Anders Røine on jaw harp, guitar and the dulcimer-like langeleik, Jo Skaansar on basses and Helge Norbakken on percussion, they carve out a meandering route that takes them from bluesy rock through jazz to more stripped-back and folk-inflected backdrops, each song inhabiting its own piece of her personal world. With guest Bugge Wesseltoft adding various keyboard shades to a handful of tracks, the scene is set for a multilingual adventure.
Anders’s vocals open the album and his more earthy Icelandic songs are interspersed amongst the female-led English language pieces to ensure that there is no straight formula. So the slow folky guitar and the care-worn emotional vocals of “Stillhetsveldet” open out into a boulder-rolling rhythm, Bugge’s electronics shivering in the background while guitar and piano trade precipitous places, carving out fleeting routes that build rhythmic power. The female-led vocals pieces are generally lighter and the voice deep and naturally conversational on “Slowly, Gently”. The space left around the words with the guitar gently picking at the edges hints at folk, but the rhythm section is always adding more. “Groruddalen” is a forceful blues-rock number again with Anders singing, but the addition of the jaw harp — which is a constant texture throughout the album — really holds its own here, hitching a ride with the drums and trading solos with guitar. The title track trades spoken word sections from a fourteenth century Icelandic poem with English singing as the rhythmic power opens the song up, leading it away into the wilderness.There are jazzy elements that shine through, particularly on the melancholy minor chord gambol through “Beloved One” while “Nobody Knows” has a quality that has echoes of Eva Cassidy. “Muna” is a heavier track that is the last of Anders’s vocals and pairs the guitar with the harp, while the album closes with the lighter “Golden Hour”, in which Bugge’s organ flutters around this summer’s evening of a song, bringing a sunset romance to the proceedings along with the emotional purity of he voice.
As a treatise on self discovery, the album works really well; the wide variety of songs, the welcoming closeness of the players and the willingness to attempt the road less travelled here and there makes for a pleasurable listening experience.-Mr Olivetti-
