Author: Helena Lynch
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Oui Plastique’s Forever Will Be Over Before You Know It Is Imagine Dragons Meets Depeche Mode, and Yes, It Works
Oui Plastique have made a second album I’m going to defend, mostly to people who flinch when electronic music gets this theatrical. Martin Nyrup and James Thomas, the Danish/UK duo behind the project, release “Forever Will Be Over Before You Know It” on 27 November through Town and Towers Records, and it’s the kind of…
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The Allure of Risk and Real Freedom: “She’s Wild” by Little Quirks
Love is rarely a tended garden. Often it’s like a wild overgrown path where you can easily scratch yourself on the thorns of your own illusions. The thing in love I think, is letting go at the right time while still being true to who you are. For many growing up in your to-mid twenties…
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Catch Me If You Can”: SHAB’s New Single Is a Chase Worth Keeping Up With
“I’m no longer going to ask permission to be myself. I know what I can offer the world, and I don’t need to prove anything,” says singer SHAB. In “Catch Me If You Can,” that statement becomes rhythm: defiant, fast, and fierce. Following “Perfume (VIP Remix),” which reached No. 11 on the Billboard Dance chart…
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“In the Kitchen Again”: Half a Century of Folk, Friendship, and Personal Stories by Anne Lederman
Musical tradition can sometimes resemble home cooking: on an old village table, the smells of different eras, stories, and countries mingle. Anne Lederman’s sixth solo album, “In the Kitchen Again”, gives the rare feeling of having touched living folklore. Lederman has played the violin for more than fifty years. She began with folk and singer-songwriter…
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“We’re All Just Stumbling Our Way Through Life”: Sophie Woods on Love, Letting Go and 3 A.M. Answers
Often, the best answer arrives too late – somewhere between three and four in the morning, when the conversation ended long ago but your thoughts are still arguing with each other. Sophie Woods knows this feeling all too well. On her double single You’ll Be Fine / Let It Be, the Danish singer-songwriter explores love,…
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“I Live and Breathe for Goosebumps”: Solveig Sørbø on Musical Experimentation, and the Power of Opera
Solveig Sørbø writes music in which baroque can meet electronics, and an angelic soprano can meet cimbaloms that evoke skeletons from horror films. Her new opera Heroin Chic, based on the novel by Maria Kjos Fonn, explores addiction, identity, death, and the desire to break beyond one’s own self – without moralising, but with a…
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MALNEEZY Builds an Electronic World Where Readiness Sets the Pace
MALNEEZY made Night Time Fever while college, relationships and questions of personal worth were becoming difficult to hold together. Night Time Fever College supplies a calendar of deadlines and assessments; emotional life acquires a harsher logic when a person borrows that calendar to judge their own development. I hear the album’s central problem as one…
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A Big World, a Little Freedom: Kasper Buch’s “Drive”
Kasper Buch is a Danish singer and songwriter from Tønder. In his previous work – the single “Are We Just Dreamers” and the album “Working Hard” – he was struggling: searching for himself, chasing a goal, throwing himself into his ambitions without reserve. In his new single, “Drive,” he does something unexpected: he switches off…
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On “Under Water”, Penny Flows Chooses to Live – and Sing – Again
I approach debut releases with particular tenderness. A first encounter with an artist is always exciting: it is not yet known whether it will be a fleeting interest for a couple of listens or music that will stay with you for a long time. It was with exactly this feeling that I pressed play on…
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Allison Lupton’s “Step Up Molly”: Songs That Will Become Folk Songs
A few days ago, Allison Lupton’s single “The Wonder” seemed to me a small, self-contained event: a warm story about how good it feels when people sing together. Today, it has gained context – the new album Step Up Molly, in which it appears as one of eleven stories. Having listened to the album in…
