Susanne Sundfør - "Ten Love Songs"

you're not going?? i'd JUST decided to opt for susanne over lady leshurr but i don't think i know anyone irl who loves her...

I love how much you actually hate music and continue year after year to pretend you don't on some sketchy technicality.

e.g. the latest albums by destroyer, julia holter, the apartments (my fave this year), the chills, fraser anderson, d'angelo, ghostpoet, laura marling, real estate, ryan adams, sufjan stevens etc. etc.

i like country and rap music

I only like music on TV

I'm still nowhere near bored of this album, and don't really expect to be tired of it in the near future at least. Granted, I don't seem to be hammering it as hard as some others are, which I guess has helped to retain its freshness.

Show last night was compelling, or what I caught of it was. (What kind of hick, kale-eating, muesli-bothering town forces venues to wind up their gigs by 9.50pm sharp?) Thankfully I got there in time to hear "Fade Away".

Sound was great, her backing band is excellent, and the whole presentation was spot on. I'm still not completely sold on the album but this sure helped.

SO AMAZING

:(

koko remains the worst gig venue in london though

On the bright side, Lex, you weren't having to watch a sub-Mumfords banjo band instead.

:(((((((

i imagine you spent the gig looking desperately for a window to jump through so you could run to koko

once i was in a spot where i could see more than the top of susanne's head it was pretty wonderful... "insects" live was probably the most whoa moment

Genuinely wish I understood what it is about this album that has people in such raptures, gonna give it another go today.

unbelievable that "delirious" hasn't been a single yet

apparently radio refuse to touch her with a bargepole, which makes all too much sense to me and just makes me wonder how, in 2015, is radio still permitted to be such an important gatekeeper

xp it took me a few listens (as evidenced by my first posts itt, lol) - it's very overwhelming initially but once my brain began to make sense of it there was no going back

i've finally gone back to the rest of her discography, you can definitely see the evolution of her sound building up towards this from relatively straightforward beginnings

As someone who loves this album but has not heard anything else she's done, is it worth checking out the earlier albums?

(As I thought there was quite a difference between this one and her previous output)

Yes it\s worth it

She performed an earlier piano version of Memorial more than four(!) years ago on this little live thing (and she says she 'finished' the song that morning)

4:20 in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_EN83Fu12o

I decided to take the advice I've been giving people wrt the Miguel album (ie start at track four and then see if it works for you). Decided to start this one at Fade Away and it feels like a different album without the blustery first couple of songs putting me in the wrong mood.

Would I like this? (Not asked that in ages.)

I would think so.

I like "Accelerate," so I'm dipping in.

Funny, this album and the Miguel album are jostling for similar placement toward the top of my year-end list, and the two albums are linked in my mind in a vague way I can't quite explain yet. Maybe it's just b/c they each have a similar confidence/openness, and b/c they do cycle through so many moods, but I think it's something more than that, too

I'm getting the same feeling seeing it up there next to Dawn Richard and Angel Haze; I think I'll always gravitate towards formally ambitious, emotionally cathartic storms of albums

I love this album, BUT...

The long instrumental interlude in "Memorial" spoils that track for me. I don't mind the idea of it, of creating this open space in the middle of the album. And maybe the episodic construction is meant to reflect episodes in the lost soldier's life, or different stages of grief, or who knows?

Anyway, what bothers me is the execution in terms of composing and arranging. As the interlude unfolds, it repeatedly stumbles. Now Sundfor (I assume it's her) is noodling around on the piano over the harmonies of the chorus. Now she has abandoned those harmonies and seems to reaching for, but not quite grasping, something in the vein of a Mozart piano concerto. When the vocals return, I can't help thinking, "Thank goodness THAT is over!"

Hah, that's the bit that sold me.

Fair enough, sometimes I can't turn off my classical-music ears/expectations.

"memorial" was the first thing i heard from this record and it elicited an immediate "holy fucking shit" from me

btw this is a great breakup record which I can unfortunately report from personal experience

sorry for your personal circumstances but I can only imagine how much better this would sound in the required emotional state to really appreciate

The long instrumental interlude in "Memorial" spoils that track for me.

That's the best part, IMO!

what really kills me about "Memorial" is that when she finally comes back in for that last chorus, it's muted, not celebratory - fits the lyric, but demonstrates considerable restraint.

Harmonically it's so different from anything Mozart would have written that it's impossible to tell if that was intentional or not but I'm leaning towards no. A lot of the record feels soundtracky to me and the general melodramatic sweep of the music emphasises that.

koko remains the worst gig venue in london though

― lex pretend, Wednesday, October 28, 2015 8:08 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

crap venue was p much the reason I didn't come down to London to see the show

glad/sad to hear it was good though

I've listened to this album, like, 5 times now. And though I think it's a good, solid, enjoyable album, I am just not hearing what is so completely special about it that you all consider it AOTY?

Good sold-out show in Manchester last night, in too small a venue. Fire alarm went off after a couple of songs, which broke things up a bit and seemed to energise Susanne and the band when they came back. Accelerate into Fade Away stupendous, and yeah Insects incredible live. Feels a bit churlish to complain, but they only played 9 songs, and were all done in 50 minutes so the shortest gig I've seen in probably 10 years.

And though I think it's a good, solid, enjoyable album, I am just not hearing what is so completely special about it that you all consider it AOTY?

I don't think this is anywhere near the album of the year, but I sort of get why people are connecting with it. Even if you exclude the middle section of Memorial, the melodic and harmonic range of a lot of these songs is much broader than in a lot of current pop, or indie-pop, Scandi or otherwise. A lot more care has gone into the arrangements, and it's what gives it the classicist edge that Ithappens refers to upthread (and what a lot of consciously retro/revivalist acts tend to get wrong). A lot of these songs feel like slowed down Abba ballads or tearjerker musical numbers or something, coupled with that soundtracky windswept feel.

I like it a lot more than I did 48hrs ago, although I really dislike Accelerate and wish she'd avoid her lower register.

Accelerate and Fade Away go so well together. That transition and Slowly (especially the key change, which feels like an album climax to me) are the moments I like most.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDkO0LuMU08

Pretty late to the party, but this is good. Some tracks remind me of School of Seven Bells, e.g. Fade Away.

Y'know, I listened to this album this morning, then I put the new Julia Holter on. And after seeing Chewie write that, I queued that song, and in the context of coming up between two Julia Holter tracks, it just sounds like a toy.

'Accelerate' rules, and feels so damn perfect coming after 'Darlings' - the more I listen to this record, the more I realise how perfectly sequenced the whole thing is, not to mention I can't name one song on this record that I dislike, and that's before we even get to how this record makes me feel.

yeah the koko gig was great, i'd heard that she doesn't have a great deal of stage presence but i dunno what those people are on about. in a koko miracle i even had an okay line of sight for the most part, despite some guy six inches taller than me deciding that a good spot to stand would be immediately in front of me, sure why not.

aaah i didn't know you'd be there, i was p much by myself because i couldn't even give away my +1 (though i had to go up on the balcony in the end anyway)

"accelerate" is amazing, yeah - one thing i love about this is how she piles more and more on what are already pretty perfect pop songs - the organ solo obv, but when it comes back with the beat??? and then the double vocal on "delirious", and the crashing drums, and the key change at the end of "slowly"...

actually, being above the crowd was incredible, you could FEEL the energy rising every time a particularly anthemic bit came up

I saw her at a festival and was pretty disappointed, but I can see she'd be great somewhere cramped and dark where people are actually listening, not picnicking.

Even if you exclude the middle section of Memorial, the melodic and harmonic range of a lot of these songs is much broader than in a lot of current pop, or indie-pop, Scandi or otherwise. A lot more care has gone into the arrangements, and it's what gives it the classicist edge that Ithappens refers to upthread (and what a lot of consciously retro/revivalist acts tend to get wrong).

This is key imo. "Slowly" is better than every Sally Shapiro song.

I've typed about it already but this album is a miracle of synthesis, a perfect hybridization of a big pop album and chamber music, of high-gloss production and single-origin auteurism (I make no secret of my enjoyment of authenticity and it rules to hear an album as wonderfully recorded and arranged as this come nearly-entirely from one woman's mind and hands), the record is stylistically diverse without feeling like it's playing tourist, I love every song except "Insects", she's the best melody-writer I can think of, I love her lyrics, love her previous records, don't 100% love her live show (her band was really loose when I saw her). I even love the middle section of Memorial, idk, yeah it's Mozart pastiche but any pastiche whether it's Mozart or Varese is still pastiche

xp "Slowly" is all about the extraordinary coda. Jamie xx should give her a call and demand tutelage in steel drums.

I think this album is, in general, tremendous, but I admit I occasionally skip "Silencer" and "Trust Me".

I know they have fans around here but my skippers are "Accelerate" and "Insects".

She was amazing in Leeds tonight, short and sweet but that's how I like a gig. Only disappointment was no 'Slowly'. Her voice hits my sweet spot. I am aware I have used the word 'sweet' twice there.

Honestly I think this might be one of those cases where ILX Hype (and not just ILX, I mean I read some Guardian review that was comparing her to Bach meets Throbbing Gristle or something, like... mate. Have you ever actually *heard* Throbbing Gristle?) has just destroyed my potential enjoyment of a thing. My expectations have just been built up too high, and everyone's praising it to the heavens, so I'm expecting the Most Amazing Record Of All Time. And it's not, it's just a nice example of Stuff I Generally Like, but the disappointment that it does not attain MOST! AMAZING! THING! status is a bit of a downer, whereas if I'd encountered it on its own terms with no expectations, I would have been pleasantly surprised, rather than disappointed.

I wish it got more hype so I could read more takes on it. Outside of ilxor I mean.