It occurred to me that we’ve been writing Nordic Music Review stuff for exactly 6 months today, so its particularly good to be returning to Siv Jakobsen, as it was on our ‘launch night’ in November that I sat listening to Siv on Soundcloud for the first time. I immediately felt drawn to the quiet personal intimacy of her music, and we’ve followed her progress ever since.
Her EP ‘The Lingering’ is released on Monday 25th, and it’s a lovely substantial 7 tracks to get immersed into. It opens with the 2 songs we’ve already heard (and written about), ‘Dark’ and ‘How we Used to Love’, I still love the simple piano theme that carries through that second track, and its probably one of my most listened to songs this year. ‘Fix You’ is Siv at her strongest, opening with a delicate guitar and her vocals, and always managing to offer that withering intensity that we wrote about previously. Every note, every word has an emotional power to it – live performances must be fairly mentally exhausting to deliver.
But the development in Sivs music since we first heard it, has come from the beautiful string arrangements which now accompany her vocals. There is always a danger that strings can be overused, but here they are thoughtful, clever and sometimes unusual – ‘Toxic’ being a great example of how they add to a track, and in their powerful introduction in ‘Buried in Treasure’. And the best is saved almost until the end, ‘Caroline’ is my favourite track on the EP, maybe it feels slightly less dark, again its characterized by a simple piano theme to open, a lovely melody and the flowing strings build throughout the rest of the track.