Stina Nordenstam

Completely!

it's so right that it seems this thread is always bumped every winter!

Yeah, I'll go with that. Even better that today is gray here (it's been mostly sunny all week).

...Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair. Apparently an old folk song...
Ain't exactly a folk song, allegedly. According to olden chronicles, 'twas written by one Stephen Foster (1826-1864), author of also "Oh! Susanna", "Old Folks At Home" and other popular faves of yore.

Remix of "Wonderful World" duet & "Birds Sing For Their Lives" is Stina solo. Very elegiac, reminds me slightly of Murcof.

I'd love to see her collaborate with The Knife. Hmm. . .

The Knife remix of "Parliament Square" is basically a collab.

seriously, 'the world is saved' is a total gem. the sort of record i can really sink my teeth into. static and restrained with something really penetrating beneath the surface. is serving as a nice companion record to joy division's 'closer' for me these last weeks.

i find it difficult to imagine people having trouble listening to her albums from start to finish. for me they establish an arresting mood very quickly and don't let go from there. they sustain a constant mood for certain, but i think that's pivotal to keeping things measured and compelling throughout.

Where's another album already.

Ha I was hoping this revive would be announcing such news...

Ditto ...

OK, my turn here... Hadn't heard a single thing she's done until The World Is Saved finally arrived at the top of my unlistened stack. WTF was my probably in waiting so long...

WTF was my problem I mean

she also did three or four songs as a soundtrack for some european film (the photographer's wife); apparently this was actually slated to be a golden palominos project but for some reason came out as stina nordenstam/anton fier. I have this if anyone wants a copy, it's impossible to find now.

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Thursday, June 19, 2003 5:12 PM (7 years ago)

weird that virtually nothing is known about this project aside from speculation based on the cover info. two of the tracks are listed as Descendence remixes and the other as a Microman remix, so I wonder if the original versions are out there somewhere. it's possible that it wasn't meant to be a soundtrack at all and just has a misleadingly cinematic title, cf. the Olivia Tremor Control's Music from the Unrealized Film Script... album.

one film that Stina really did score was Jean Claude, a 2002 Swedish television documentary about a homeless Parisian man. it's interesting (to me) that a few tracks from The World Is Saved ("I'm Staring Out the World", "The World Is Saved", "Morning Belongs to the Night", and the bonus track "Failing to Fly") originally appeared on that soundtrack in slightly unfinished form. while a lot of the rest of the material on The World Is Saved veers toward trip-hop (or fairly modern indie pop, anyways) and has semi-narrative lyrics about adultery and postcards and turning into butterflies, those tracks have always stood out for me as being really organically/classically arranged and lyrically abstract, and I wonder how an entire album of that kind of material — or even a double album with one disc of "I'm Staring at the World" sounding stuff and another of "Butterfly" sounding stuff — would have turned out. brilliant, possibly.

I just wish she'd release the handful of songs from Jean Claude that didn't make it onto the album. "Give Me More of Everything" has a particularly exquisite arrangement of strings and woodwinds and creaking wagon wheels (?) that would've been a highlight on any of her albums. I really just wish she'd put out a new album one of these days, though, even if it's self-released.

People who like those might like a lot of the darker songs on Lhasa's The Living Road album, although Lhasa is pretty much the opposite of Stina vocally.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, January 3, 2005 7:30 AM (6 years ago)

she said in an interview around the time The World Is Saved came out that she rarely listened to music by other singers but that Lhasa was one she enjoyed. one artist who really reminds me of Stina is former Sparklehorse collaborator Sol Seppy, who put out a solo album and EP in 2006. I'm suspicious of reviews that compare other artists to Stina Nordenstam, though. it seems like her name is whipped out almost as lazily as Bjork's to describe any and all "quirky", "mysterious" Scandinavian female singer-songwriters regardless of what their music actually sounds like.

it's so right that it seems this thread is always bumped every winter!

― lex pretend (lex pretend), Thursday, January 4, 2007 9:30 AM (5 years ago)

Well, still fall here but the time is right. And Memories of a Color is sounding good right this second.

an apt Sol Seppy reference upthread :)

miss you boo :-( come out of retirement

there used to be a tour section on her website which when you clicked it read "Stina don't tour"

damn it thread bumpers on this

that said this sol seppy album is kind of amazing

I just wish she'd release the handful of songs from Jean Claude that didn't make it onto the album. "Give Me More of Everything" has a particularly exquisite arrangement of strings and woodwinds and creaking wagon wheels (?) that would've been a highlight on any of her albums.

http://sclors.tumblr.com/post/40897837779/give-me-more-of-everything-stina-nordenstam-i

still feel like this is one of the best songs recorded by anyone ever

the way her voice cracks on "have no favorites at all" is pretty much perfect

well, she's still alive

(but there's no mention of a new album in the works, so I apologize for getting anyone's hopes up)

literally the other day I was telling someone I was afraid she'd just quit music altogether so this is encouraging

must be autumn again

also that

(but an interview is about 1000x more than "uh, we heard this snippet of this song in a Crystal Castles song" or w/e

Good to see that Stina has been selected as one of the 12 'music greats' to be included in the Swedish Music Hall of Fame'.

http://www.easybranches.eu/european-news/1577523.html

We're coming up on ten years since "The World Is Saved" was released? Crazy. I guess she has given up on music.

rare footage from her cocktail jazz days!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAkHBBP6nWk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksKR_BQ1v4E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksKR_BQ1v4E

(I just hope the unauthorized release of these videos won't push her next album back another decade...)

oops, that third clip should be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orSZQ6VIE7g

amazing

she's fucking hypnotic

holy shit how had I not seen these

What's the context here? What kind of TV show is this?

The arrangements and sweetness of her voice reminds me of the first two Cardigans albums.

this is straight out of a David Lynch movie

what happened to her? she was so desperate, so lonely, so sad and now this! she has discovered jazz or did jazz discover her? amazing!

did i get the timing wrong? are all these cocktail jazz clips from before her solo releases? in that case the evolution of her music is not so surprising really.