Noisetrade strikes again, this time with my eyes bring drawn to a comparison I am often leery of… It sets the bar pretty high when an artist compares themselves to Damien Rice. But I was bored and curious; a cocktail of emotions that has led to everything from shaving with whipped-cream to the Jackass franchise, and to discovering the wonderful music of Siv Jakobsen.
The Lingering Mixtape is a five song EP (seven, if you include the two remixes) that truly delivers emotion, rawness and a deep musicality. I don’t fear overstating my excitement over finding an artist who so closely delivers the same bare-bones, serenely turbulent music as Mr. Rice, but I know that if a picture is worth a thousand words, this video writes a novel by itself.
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Her lyrics have a deep anchor in reality, especially in songs like Buried in Treasure. I always appreciate an artist who makes their lyrics available, because what makes great songs truly extraordinary is the combination of individually great elements; lyrics, melody, instrumentation, harmonies. The words of her songs read like a second draft of a diary, with all the present, emotional reflex of the experience, informed with the widened perspective of a second glance. She tells the story of a broken man, clinging to whatever links him to a time he felt whole, and does so with compassion, but an awareness of how bleak the situation is. And a sense that she’s talking about more like 7 billion people than one man.
He tries to change – stays the same
Passes time in a haze
He’s a broken clock – His years are lost – lost
How We Used to Love is a somber cry from second-hand suffering, and without a doubt my favorite song from Ms. Jakobsen. Another similarity she holds with Damien is that her quantity of songs is expanded almost infinitely in the various versions and settings in which her songs are reimagined. The naked acoustic version from SOFAR is clothed in sinfonietta for the EP, and then changes wardrobe entirely for the Martin Hviid remix.
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Just go ahead and leave a huge tip when you download it from Noisetrade. Worth ever penny.
Or you can just pick up the full album on iTunes, Bandcamp or Amazon.
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