[Originally published on Twisted Ear]
Less really is more for a unique talent
Long before Sigur Rós became the obligatory soundtrack for sweeping vistas on wildlife documentaries, Nordic musicians have turned to the dramatic natural wilderness around them for creative inspiration. So it is with Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Silje Nes, who spent her formative years in the tiny town of Leikanger in Norway’s largest fjord of Sognefjord, before moving to Bergen in 2000 to begin making music. Her otherworldly and largely improvised recordings are collected on this endearing, understated debut.
From the off, the lyrics suggest an artist immersed in the environment around her. Over All is a glockenspiel-flavoured nursery rhyme teeming with both natural and supernatural imagery: buzzing bees, swamps, frogs and monsters. This child-like awe of the natural world is complimented by a poetic flair and bold musical invention: similar qualities which saw Joanna Newsom installed as indie folk darling last year. With its crisp arpeggios and lilting melody, Drown is disarming in its delicate simplicity, a shimmering, ethereal flight of fancy. Shapes, Electic is the first of several near-instrumentals, with Silje cooing wordlessly over a backdrop of scratchy ambience and woodwind. It's a perfect mood-setter before the gorgeous title track, an implausibly sweet lullaby with echoes of Stina Nordenstam's Little Star (a compliment of the highest order). A counterpoint to such gossamer pop delights comes with Giant Disguise, a hypnotic, slow-building rootsy mantra which evokes a similar druggy inertia to much-missed Domino acolytes Woodbine.
The second half of the album sees a slight dip in quality, with several wilfully unfocussed mood pieces so minimalist as to barely register. Many of these songs were actually written as recorded, lending them a necessarily unfinished air. Even so, there are a couple of hidden gems: Bright Night Morning is a rustic torch ballad possessed of a nagging, frazzled melancholy, like a stripped-down Mazzy Star. Melt, with its wispy refrain “the summer sun will make this melt” repeated softly over a spare guitar riff, is dewy-eyed and mesmerising.
At its best, Silje’s music conjures up a world of fragile beauty and kaleidoscopic intrigue. Like Four Tet and Boards of Canada, there’s a warm-blooded nostalgic core to this organic electro-folk which underpins the spirit of experimentalism. Ames Room is the sound of an artist alive with possibility, guileless in outlook and boundless in imagination.
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