Bel Canto
Birds Of Passage

THE REVIEW

An interesting listening opportunity is offered to us by the second album of Bel Canto, released in 1989. The Norwegian trio - Anneli Drecker on vocals plus Nils Johansen and Geir Jenssen - presents with "Birds of Passage" a lively and curious work, although destined to remain in the hearts of only a few enthusiasts. How many bands from cold Norway do you know?

A well-crafted mixture of new wave, electronic, dream pop, and a few splashes of ethnic music come together across the album's 11 tracks. It certainly doesn't belong to the mainstream, that's clear, but neither does it reside in a catacombal underground. Let's say that sometimes a techno influence might remind one of Depeche Mode, while on other occasions the thought might go to Dead Can Dance (e.g., the intro of "Dewy Fields").

The protagonist is always the voice of Anneli Drecker, a soft vocalist who knows how to take on more aggressive tones when she wants. The two sidekicks share the work on instruments and programming (Johansen is also on vocals in "Time Without End"), along with six guest artists on acoustic instruments like strings, clarinet, trumpet, and flugelhorn.

Electronics dominate, but the album never becomes monotonous or confined to an unchangeable stylistic dimension. It is precisely the variety of this "Birds of Passage", perhaps suggested by the title itself, that proves successful. There are no lack of spirited interludes such as "The Glassmaker", a track where Drecker breaks into a Middle Eastern vocalization, intoning not lyrics but syllables without meaning (a bit like Elizabeth Fraser or Lisa Gerrard), or like "Continuum", a danceable techno track sung in... Spanish.

An album thus to be savored in moments when seeking a not too demanding, yet not banal listen. The story of Bel Canto will continue beyond "Birds of Passage" despite recording the departure, right after this work, of Geir Jenssen, whom we will soon encounter again under the moniker Biosphere: a name well known to lovers of ambient.