Bergen’s going to be pretty cold in January, but Aabenbaringen over aaskammen by the Norwegian city’s Casiokids will thaw the most frozen of feet. Their twinkly, occasionally Afro-assisted, sometimes New Order-ish electropop brings a smile too.
It could have been Fleet Foxes’s Helplessness Blues, or maybe The War on Drugs’s Slave Ambient, but this is the one that keeps being returned to. Lykke Li’s Wounded Rhymes kept forcing its way to the top of the pile, insisting it had to be heard. The music was forceful, the melodies instantly unforgettable but it was also impossible not to be distracted by the lyrics of “Get Some”: “Don’t pull your pants before I go down… Like the shotgun, I need an outcome, I'm your prostitute, you gonna get some”.
Glass crunches underfoot. It’s been raining constantly, but the odour reveals that a fair amount of what's in the cobbled street's central gutter is urine. Everyone appears to be drunk. The French equivalent of crusties aren’t content with one dog-on-string. Some have four. During the annual Trans Musicales festival, Saturday night in and around the Place St-Anne of Brittany’s capital Rennes is a keep-you-on-your-toes experience.
Although they're beginning to get cold, the winds blowing in from Scandinavia have recently brought enough music to keep anyone warm through long, dark nights. Finnish intensity, pop and introspection from Denmark, Swedish luxuriousness, Icelandic keyboard quirk, Norwegians that enfold - all are here. Along with Estonian haziness.
It’s pronounced doh, like Homer Simpson’s favourite exclamation. Although The dø aren’t yellow cartoon characters, they edge towards the caricature with songs like “Gonna be Sick!” and “Smash Them All (Night Visitors)”. Their art pop has a slight taste of The Sugarcubes and Olivia Merilahti’s vocals can be a bit too cutesy-pie. But Both Ways Open Jaws is great.
She grew up in Norway, lives in Sweden and has been recording since 2003. Her new album, It All Starts with One, is her most assured, her most vital. But Ane Brun’s recent work with Peter Gabriel has attracted attention outside Scandinavia. Her vocal contribution to his remake of “Don’t Give Up” claimed it as her own. Last night erased Gabriel from her CV. This fabulous show was a new beginning.
It’s easy to get lost in the music of Danish singer-songwriter Agnes Obel. As she ended with "On Powdered Ground" singing “don’t break your back on the track”, her piano meshed with a cello and a Scottish harp, making what was already an affecting album track into a requiem. Obel’s Philharmonics album collects a series of similarly autumnal reflections. A rain-spattered evening was just right.
Fusion is a pretty difficult word to deal with. Miles Davis's Bitches Brew might have inspired a raft of jazzers to embrace rock, but an awful lot of the crossover that followed – like prog rock – became the musical equivalent of the love that dare not speak its name. Shoot!, the debut album from Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen, might fit that bill, but it’s not that straightforward.
Iceland is remote. Strategic too. Vikings stopped off there on the way to North America. It hosted the Reagan-Gorbachev summit 25 years ago. On the anniversary, visitors from America, Canada and across continental Europe are in Reykjavík for the 13th annual Iceland Airwaves. Over its five days the festival brings an extraordinary range of music to Iceland’s capital. Three years on from the country’s financial meltdown, Iceland remains strategic. Culturally strategic.
Although Norwegian, Ane Brun’s biggest impact has been in Sweden, where she lives. Since her last studio album, she’s toured and recorded with Peter Gabriel. Her new album again finds her diving off the expected path, throwing herself forcefully onto new musical ground.