The band celebrate and luxuriate in the tunes on the set, discovering ways of building and releasing tension while always allowing the space for Gundersen’s delicate vocals.
Stunt Records: STUCD23082
Inger Marie Gundersen: vocals; Espen Lind: guitar, keyboards, backing vocals; Torjus Vierli: piano, organ, keyboards; Tom Frode Tveita: bass; Martin Windstad: drums, percussion; Kristian Frostad: pedal steel guitar, lap steel guitar, guitar; Eriend Viken: fiddle; Tore Johansen: trumpet
Recorded January 2023 by Dag Erik Johansen at Athletic Sound, Halden, Norway
Across this set, Gundersen’s voice is a warm hug that provides comfort even as the singer gently unravels each song and lays bare it emotional core. The only tune that might constitute a jazz ‘Standard’ is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘We kiss in a shadow’, track 4 – although ‘Narrow Daylight’, track 9, from Diana Krall and Elvis Costello feels that it ought to be in any singers’ repertoire and treads the same ‘Americana’ path of the opening track, Gretchen Peters’ ‘Five Minutes’. Between these, Gundersen has songs from Paul McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Mark Knopfler, Bill Fay and Jon Brion.
Each of these are given readings that explore their darker corners and bring an emotional intensity to their lyrics. Even a tune as hackneyed as Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’ is, on track 2, shifted from irritating hair-rock ballad (at last in my view of the world of music) into a song that feels that it conveys the fears and yearning of an abandoned lover travelling in the hope of reconciliation.
As the Rod Stewart song might hint, Gundersen takes a very eclectic approach to her choice of songs. Gundersen’s ability to move into the microphone to produce such an intimate sound is mesmerising and, given the challenge that this presents to so many less experienced singers (who seem so often to peppers their singing with annoying breaths or lip-smacks when they try to sing earnestly), and her ability to sing so close to the microphone and draw the listener in to her singing is something that might be easy to overlook because she does this so eloquently.
The band celebrate and luxuriate in the tunes on the set, discovering ways of building and releasing tension while always allowing the space for Gundersen’s delicate vocals.
