Lene Marlin
Twist The Truth

Well, yes. I am happy.

A positive impulse shot through my body like a bolt from the blue.

Walking into a supermarket in search of turtle food and wandering among the new releases, gulping in horror at the trash that spreads like fury across 90% of the displayed works. And then a ray of light soaring into the sky, there to illuminate a hidden and shy album between the violent dysenteric impact of Giusy Ferreri and one of the Dari, almost signifying that no one wants to listen to classy pop music anymore. The album in question is "Twist The Truth" by Lene Marlin, a sweet Norwegian girl who releases an album once in a blue moon (four years have passed since "Lost In A Moment").

Lene Marlin is, along with Jewel, my favorite unpretentious singer-songwriter: both splendid, Nordic, and with a great ability to write impactful songs, yet managing to be sensual and different, experimental why not.

The fact is that she is still alive, she hasn't fallen into a glacier or gotten lost chasing polar bears, she is there, in her little wooden house lost in the woods, humming in front of the fire with her acoustic guitar.

And she launches her latest work with a jewel like "Here We Are", an intimate and shy ballad, recalling the sensations of "Another Day" from times past, which I consumed in the CD player like chocolate between my teeth. "Here We Are" is a song of love and return, so sincere and delicate, yet penetrating and paradoxically violent. An ode, a whispered prayer, supported by the dancing of melancholic and sovereign violins, the powerful condiment of a piece of heart. A ballad of precious emotions and treasures, enough to identify the Norwegian singer's path as one of continuous change, without the risk of writing the same song for a lifetime.

Now you wanna hold my hand
You chose to take it
The truth is that I never really thought we'd make it
Here we are
No chance I'm leaving
Ideas of love and life it sure can be deceiving
Here we are now

Much like "Another Day" was a diary of depression and disappointment and "Lost In A Moment" the finding of happiness, "Twist The Truth" is the point of maturity, where Lene knows how to experiment and change face in every piece, rediscovering her genial flair for originality.

Thus, a weak "Everything's Good" placed precariously at the start is compensated for by a beautiful "Have I Ever Told You?", a song you would never expect in a Lene Marlin album tracklist: a piece with jazzist interventions, electronic-glitch incursions à la Bjork, and a subdued singing reminiscent of Tori Amos. A bit blues, a bit jazz, a bit pop. It astounds, much like the final cry of an intense drama such as "Come Home".

"You Could Have" is instead a poetic and melancholic country tune, worthy of the saddest and most graceful Lene, with an unusual sped-up finale characterized by the entrance of guitars, enveloping and fierce, the piano striving to outshine its colleagues with sudden virtuosity, desired by a starry sky violated by a curious young girl.

"I'll Follow" is surely a moving ballad in pure Marlin style, with winds rising and falling, caressing the throat of those swept away by intense and sweet feelings. A lullaby that warms and chills at the same time, demonstrating the ambivalent talent of this nymph's music, relegated by most with a memory of "Sitting Down Here" by Vivin Ciana.

There is no revolution in her music, there's no thought of creating a masterpiece, nor of pleasing everyone. In Lene's music there is simplicity, pure and raw. Whether you like it or not, this might unsettle you or not. Because even in the artifices of her music there's that spontaneity hard to find in contemporary pop music.

There are dancing ballads, suggestive and precious, constructed with rosy enchanted petals. Ten pieces to take and carry away, under a new twilight. To be listened to with hope, swept away by an unprecedented desire for positivity, under the grey sky of snowy Norway.

But the spell occurs with the seal's close: the superb "You Will Cry No More", halfway between essential jazz-blues and gospel, with distant and spectral voices accompanying a folk voice and a drum recalling the rhythmic passages of Sigur Ròs's Tàkk. A three-minute jewel closed by a dancing flute, almost as if this were a summer fairy tale capable of making it snow in June.

Tàkk.