The plan this year was to write short concise reviews and generally I’m failing already, so I’ll try and keep things shorter. But I still want to give fair consideration to Norwegian indie folk songwriter Louise Weseth as I’ve added a couple of her songs to our Indie playlist, and she’s now released a 5 track EP entitled ‘Woodlands’ which I’ve really enjoyed this week.
She appears to be a relative newcomer, in that she only released her 1st single last year, and she splits her time between Copenhagen and Oslo, I guess in the same way as I split my time between Stoke and Trent.
Anyway ’Woodlands’ is a soft enticing EP, which benefits from warm natural vocals and sensitively arranged instrumentation, taking an approach where ‘less is more’. A great example of that is ‘Moon’, with a subtle violin that just adds a gentle melancholic air to the music, whilst at times the music is stripped back just to leave Weseth’s vocals, it’s really appealing.
Title track ‘Woodlands’ creates an atmosphere that will really make you feel like you’re wandering through woods on a cold morning, with the strings maybe the sounds of the wildlife and trees above, with the sun just poking through the canopies - I might be wrong obviously, we don’t have so many of these things in these parts.
’tonight we’ll dream the same dream’ concludes the EP, a track which after a few listens has become my favourite, even if it’s not necessarily the most melodic. I really like the instrumental textures that wrap the song in a comfort blanket of swirling sounds, yet it still feels quite exposed and intimate too.
It goes without saying that there’s a lot of amazing Norwegian songwriters and vocalists all sitting in isolated log cabins in forests writing soft dreamy folk influenced music. But of course there’s always room for more, and if you give ‘Woodlands‘ a chance you will really find it easy to get drawn into Louise Weseth‘s enchanting musical world.