release date: Sep. 12, 2016
format: cd (8melo 015)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,64]
producer: Boi Holm
label: Melodika - nationality: Denmark
Track highlights: 1. "Drømte jeg gik og blev ved med at gå" - 2. "Jeg falder" - 4. "Bravo november" - 5. "Alt forsvinder og vender hjem" - 8. "Surfin' Sjælland" - 9. "Glæden ved at være undervejs" (live) - 11. "Hver dag er et comeback" (live)
3rd studio album by De efterladte released three years after the fine Alvorsord og etagevask is produced by Boi Holm, who also worked as co-producer and additional instrumentalist on the 2013 album - here, he's both credited for (additional) instruments and as composer of two tracks (tracks #2 and #7). Musically, the album initiates by following the message of the title, which could be translated to "Goodbye sorrow". It opens up with much more energy and uptempo compositions than usually heard from a band who has been dominated by a melancholy and not seldom a bitter tone by lyricist and vocalist Peter H. Olesen. The message is accentuated in the cover design. The inlay is a folded poster that when unfolded is the instruction to 'how to fold a basic dart paper plane'... By that, it already attempts to be the exact opposite of what could be taken as a pretentious album.
The album contains the usual inclusion of a spoken-word composition, here: "Vi er tidsrejsende" and an entirely instrumental - "Surfin' Sjælland" - credited primary musical composer Michael Lund, who has a nice 'flanger' / delay quality feedback to his Fender[?] always rhyming with americana.
Adjø tristesse is yet another fine and sincere album by Peter Olesen and Michael Lund, who seems to have found the balance between the ever-present melancholic gloominess of songwriter Olesen's lyrics and (almost) equal parts of liveliness, but also by adding more tempo to a few songs without losing the sense of coherency as a sharpening to the whole picture.
I really enjoy this for now and keep returning to it, and I may just raise my rating in a near future 'cause the album is quite intense and multi-faceted.
[ Gaffa.dk 5 / 6, Berlingske 4 / 6 stars ]
