We’re not going to say a huge amount about the new Susanne Sundfør album ‘Ten Love Songs’. This is not a sign of criticism in the slightest, but the truth is that we’ve found that most of our ‘hits’ at Nordic Music Review come from our reviews of smaller up and coming bands and new artist features. The reality is that whilst we had sleepless nights wondering whether we could say anything coherent about the new Bjork album, we needn’t have worried, hardly anyone read the review anyway. It had been covered in huge detail elsewhere, and from reviews at reputable magazines and sites who had preview copies.
The same applies to a certain extent to Susanne Sundfør, its had a Universally positive reception, many people will have bought the album and found reviews on the release day, and there will be people out there with far more knowledge of her back catalogue too. But we will try and add a few words of our own.
Sundførs 5th studio album is a collection of songs which demonstrates the huge diversity in her talents and songwriting skills. The opening track ‘Darlings’ has a simple but powerful melody accompanied by keyboard, its simple but captivating. But then the album instantly switches tack to 2 more commercial sounding electro-pop songs, ‘Accelerate’ and ‘Fade Away’ – its not what I was expecting, but they’re dynamic and very different.
In the middle of the album we then have ‘Memorial’, an extraordinary track which is part love song and part piano and orchestral arrangement, totaling 10 minutes in length. The arrangement veers between different classical musical styles – and as good as the song is, this arrangement is the part of the album I’m least comfortable with. ‘Delirious’ and ‘Trust Me’ are also both strong songs, and so is the concluding track of the album ‘Insects’, even if it does push me out of my comfort zone.
Sundfør wanted to make an album with complete creative freedom to do what she wanted, and that’s what shes done. ‘Ten Love Songs’ is an album which demonstrates the extraordinary talents of Susanne Sundfør, vocally breathtaking and enthralling, musically interesting and diverse, this is to be enjoyed.
Nordic Music Review - 8/10