release date: Feb. 7, 2005
format: cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,92]
producer: Katharina Nuttall & Ane Brun
label: DetErMine Records / V2 - nationality: Norway
Track highlights: 1. "To Let Myself Go" - 2. "Rubber & Soul" - 3. "Balloon Ranger" (Remix version) - 4. "My Lover Will Go" (4 / 5) - 5. "A Temporary Dive" (5 / 5) - 6. "Laid in Earth" - 8. "Where Friend Rhymes With End" - 9. "The Fight Song"
2nd studio album by Ane Brun released nearly two years after her fine debut Spending Time With Morgan from Feb. 2003, is once again a collection of songs solely written and composed by Brun herself, albeit with a single cover, "Lady in Earth" by Henry Purcell.
With the album, Ane Brun fulfills her great potential and gives us an even stronger personal collection of songs that is not only based on an American singer / songwriter tradition but is shaped by Brun's very own expression. It's a huge conglomerate borrowing from older European folk traditions rooted in the Middle Ages and in Nordic ballads and then mixed with folk rock and baroque pop, and in this mix, something new arises - something that would later be named 'neo folk'. The string arrangements are generally turned down, and they're only present on a few tracks, while several songs are only arranged with accompanying acoustic guitar. The title track isn't the only great composition here - in fact, it's hard to point to songs that shouldn't be highlighted as featured songs. It's both an enormously varied and coherent album at the same time. The variation comes in the dosage of an almost locked in emotional expression, where Brun sings painfully and sincerely, and then on the other hand, the individual songs also take form as light-hearted humorous comments. The overall impression is a very strict whole because the instrumentation is nevertheless narrow and seemingly hand-picked or the songs have been cut down to a minimum of accompanying instruments - it's always the acoustic that carries the tracks with Ane Brun's characteristic vibrato and her strumming guitar, which ties it all together ever so nicely.
A Temporary Dive is a nice Nordic release with an international sound and then it's also an album that places Norway at the artistic top, not just in Scandinavia, but in modern popular music.
Highly recommended.
