With new releases thin on the ground this week (but they are coming) I’m doing some catching up and who better to do it with than the Trondheim-based Norwegian/Greek Amanda Tenfjord? Her EP ‘Miss the Way You Missed Me’ was released a couple of weeks ago.
As with her compatriot Dagny, Amanda has been tipped as ‘the next pop sensation’ for a long time now and I was wondering for a while when she was going to make that breakthrough. To be honest I also found some of her early songs a little derivative, sounding too close to Sigrid for comfort although there are quite a few Norwegian artists who do that.
Then I saw her performing at Iceland Airwaves and was instantly hooked. In fact it was on a detour. I was on my way between two other shows (these showcase festivals are all the same, Sod’s Law dictates that the artists you really want to see are always on at the same time) when I passed her venue and decided to give her a couple of songs to convince me. And did she just.
Moreover, the clincher was this song, ‘Kill the Lonely’. Performing live, she has a voice, the power, and stage presence that belies much of her recorded work.
The unusually titled ‘Kill the Lonely’ isn’t a call to eliminate Billy No Mates but rather to abolish feelings of loneliness, including those that persist within the mind even in the company of people. It’s also a call to arms for dumping the cell phone and talking to each other face-to-face. It should really be called ‘Kill the Loneliness’ but that doesn’t scan, I suppose. And it was written before the pandemic so, yes, I suppose there is a degree of anachronism in the sentiment.
Two things about her you’ll discover when you listen to her EP (and you will after hearing this track) – there is always a strong melody with Amanda and she knows how to optimise percussion.