Anneli Drecker
Frolic

Elegant, sophisticated, not for everyone but never too cold or unnecessarily convoluted, Anneli Drecker is a classy singer who has never managed, or perhaps has never truly cared, to achieve a notable level of fame beyond her national borders. Perhaps because the musical offering of Bel Canto, a trio formed in the late '80s and dissolved in the early years of the new millennium with Anneli as the vocalist, did not fit into the particular and schematic logics of commerce, or maybe simply because in this specific musical field Norway has fewer saints in heaven, or it's perceived as less "cool" than neighboring Iceland, who knows. Probably Anneli herself has been content with her status as a national icon, since the numerous features that mark her career always see her alongside other Norwegian artists, including Royksopp and Apoptygma Berzerk just to name a couple. In any case, Anneli Drecker is a multifaceted and fascinating character who has essentially abandoned her recording artist activity after her second solo album dated 2005, perhaps due to a lack of stimuli and inspiration, or because she was already satisfied with what she had achieved before, again a little mystery.

"Frolic," the swan song of this alluring Norwegian chanteuse, is an album where, song after song, the meager stereotype of the Nordic ice queen inexorably crumbles, but Anneli Drecker chooses the less obvious path to debunk the cliché, doing so with class and experience, never ruffled, winning over the listener with small and gracefully elegant steps. "Frolic" travels at a steady/relaxed pace, the supporting structure is purely electronic and there is very little Scandinavian in the sound; Celtic and Asian atmospheres repeatedly arise, and such world-music aspirations are a perfectly integrated component in the context, wisely blended among lounge idylls and danceable uptempos. A praise of slowness, fantasy, and femininity, well represented by visionary and sensual electronic midtempos like "You Don't Have to Change" and "Safe Now", perfect to fully appreciate the softness and warmth emanating from the enchanting vocal cords of Anneli Drecker, who uses reverb and vocal overdubs to further increase the exotic suggestions and flavors of "Frolic". Clear ideas and stylistic features continually revisited but no hint of monotony and stagnation, the artist manages to embody with the same charm and mastery the maternal candor of a lulling lullaby like "My Emily" and the sensuality of a modern-day Salomé in "Monkeytrap", a hypnotic and majestic belly dance where sounds and colors of distant lands, Arabic rhythms, and Indian mantras flow impetuously. Continuous and chameleonic metamorphoses, so subtle and natural that one barely notices them, the cool jazzy elegance of "Cool World" and the warm and danceable rhythms of a flirtatious electro-R'n'B like "Stop This", an exquisite atmospheric ballad like "Strange Little Bird", with relaxed and expansive sounds reminiscent of the more refined Erasure of the mid-'90s, the orchestral new-age idyll of "Angel Bossanova", which thanks to the intrinsic sensuality of the singing fortunately does not turn out to be too ethereal and volatile or the sinuous progress of "Painted Black", a "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" cleaned up, without makeup, and dressed in evening attire.

However you want to interpret and frame it, the fact remains that "Frolic" is something truly remarkable: the central link of a chain that ideally connects Sade to Maggie Reilly, a fabric made of intertwining air and fire, the two lightest, most dynamic, and volatile elements, a Mardi Gras to the elegant and restrained rhythms of a high-fashion show, a burst of sounds, scents, and colors that to be fully appreciated requires an approach synchronized with that of the work: attentive, open, and relaxed, so that no nuance of this soft feminine chromatic fantasy goes unnoticed. Well-spent time that Anneli Drecker will abundantly repay with her exquisite class.