Susanne Sundfør
The Brothel

Snow. White, pure snow. A uniform and soft expanse. All-encompassing. It adapts to every shape, to every object, and seems to make them its own, silently, inexorably taking over. Snow arrives without making a sound, asking no one’s permission. Blind and mute, it dances alone. In the distance, beyond the impenetrable sky: a barely perceptible echo advances from celestial distances, rides the wind, comes towards us, and caresses our face. The immaculate flakes accompany it, leaving it immediately after. That echo, turned into a lullaby, is made of clear and pure microcrystals that begin to transform and take shape before our eyes.

The muse who enjoys doing all this has a name: Susanne Sundfør, and her world is made of music and ice. A voice that recalls snow and crystals, vibrating with lethal intensity, possessing an almost adolescent purity, yet it is warm like the crackling fire in the hearth of a cabin. The Norwegian, born in '86, knows well about ice, and she demonstrates it in these ten tracks from her third album released last year, “The Brothel.” Like a white ice sorceress, Susanne had fun freezing different genres into huge soundtracks: with icy indifference, but also with so much class, she simply shattered them, and the fragments melted in the fire of emotions that only piano and string arrangements can evoke. The attitude throughout is very personal and somehow original, aimed at creating catchy yet never banal melodies, supported by simple structures that are not immediately predictable. In the snowy landscape that our Norwegian paints (aided in production by Lars Horntveth of Jaga Jazzist), the voice is the true protagonist: an ice skater projecting her delicate evolutions into our innermost being. Whether it's pieces with an acoustic flavor consisting of piano, keyboards, and strings, like the pure emotions of the title track, the dreamy “Black Widow,” the solemn yet delicate “O Master,” or the prayer/litany/lullaby “Father Father,” or whether one encounters more intricate and constructed songs where synths, percussion, and electronic arrangements color everything (“Turkish Delight,” “Lilith,” “It’s All Gone Tomorrow”), the impression is that the voice always manages to stand out above all, guiding the arrangements without ever overshadowing them. Like the very particular warmth of a bluish, cold but inviting fire; a "burning ice" that we turn in our hands like a lava diamond we never want to let go.

No sobs or self-indulgence in “The Brothel,” as perhaps some singer-songwriters with semi-depressive tones tend to do: the icy wind from the pole has frozen the tears, sweeping them away, leaving the scene to twilight and the shadows cast by auroral slashes. It's up to you to admire them. But remember to bundle up well.