release date: Sep. 6, 2011
format: 2 cd (Deluxe)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,86]
producer: Tobias Fröberg
label: Balloon Ranger Recordings - nationality: Norway
Track highlights: CD 1) 1. "These Days" (4 / 5) - 2. "Words" (4 / 5) - 4. "Do You Remember" (4,5 / 5) (live at KCRW) - 6. "Lifeline" - 7. "One" - 9. "Oh Love" - 10. "Undertow"
5th studio album by Ane Brun following the release of Sketches (Sep. 2008), which presents her acoustic demo versions of her most recent studio album Changing of the Seasons (Mar. 2008). This new album is often mentioned as her sixth studio album - but that's only when adding the demo version album to the list, which I find misleading. She has thus been on a 3½ years hiatus, which also produced the live album Live at Stockholm Concert Hall (2009), and this period was also shadowed by some time off due to reoccurring physical illness. The album was released as a standard CD issue of ten songs and as a 2 CD Deluxe edition with a bonus cd of eight tracks, which includes three covers.
With It All Starts with One Ane Brun continues to impress, both as a songwriter, as musical composer, and as a sublime vocalist. This new album is her third to top the albums chart in Norway, which it replicated in Sweden - a first accomplishment for a Norwegian artist. All in all, It All Starts with One is another fine album from one of the most original voices in all of Scandinavia. She never just seems satisfied as an artist but always comes up with new stylistic variations, and here she both proves her skills with emotional ballads and uptempo art pop but really no matter what style she excels in there's always a width, an amplitude and an enormous depth, making it all the more likeable.
This is one of her best albums and naturally a highly recommended listen.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, 👍Mojo, The Independent 4 / 5, 👎PopMatters 2,5 / 5 stars ]
