We last featured Icelandic songwriter Axel Flóvent at the start of the year when he released his impressive album ‘You Stay By The Sea’. Often an album release from an artist can lead to a long period of silence, but not the case with Axel as he’s returned with a collaboration with Irish singer songwriter Ciaran Lavery, which is a pretty fabulous combination. It’s cheerily entitled ‘Give In’.
It’s the first in a series of singles which features Axel and artists from around the world, which sounds great and after the intensity of the album (and it was a long time coming), it should allow him to recharge his batteries somewhat.
The single however is still very much in the ‘Axel Flóvent’ style, and it was mostly written by Ciaran Lavery, who took the almost completed song to Flóvent to help finish it. As he explains: “this song is the epitome of the last couple of years, in my mind, right from the first line. It is a three-minute sigh, but one that is cathartic. Axel has a f**king incredible voice, as fragile as a cobweb. So I wanted to rise to his delivery with whatever equally fragile lyrics I could muster, then see what he could make of them.”.
It’s a good match certainly, so heartfelt and raw are each of the vocals, you could be forgiven for thinking they trying to out score each other on the official metric we use to measure misery and dispair in songwriting at NMR - the ’Mirel Wagner Scale of Bleakness’. It’s probably a score-draw, I love both the vocals and in all seriousness the two slightly different vocal styles complement each other really well and it is a really gorgeous song.
We look forward to the other collaborations in the EP. With there being ‘world collaborations’ I’m particularly looking forward to the upbeat Dixieland Jazz / Mexican Mariachi crossover track that we can all dance down the street to.
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