press
The Brag
2003
by Dylan Behan
Magnetic Nordic Lullaby
Roll over Royksopp, Norway delivers a fresh new songwriter.
Coming to out ears from Norway via Scotland, folktronic singer/songwriter Even Johansen (known to his A&R man as Magnet) - brews beautifully bristling windswept songs of loss and optimism, highlighted by a Thom York-on-helium vocal lightness that has too-cool music publications like NME labelling his music: "so cuddly it almost makes you think of 1999 without spitting."
With his moniker coming from a magnetic tattoo cure for childhood anaemia - Magnet, at times, sounds too darn cool for his own good. If it wasn't for the summer bittersweet lyrics or the occasional lap steel guitar popping up (see the exsquisite first single, Where Happiness Lives), the debut album On Your Side could risk being pigeonholed as a Radiohead derivative. A resemblance many reviewers have noted.
"I totally understand why there are comparisons," notes the talkative and personable Even down the line from sunny Norway. "If they (the reviewers) like something, they would like people to buy it. And the best way to relay that information is to have something to lay it on...it's an abstract thing. For me, it's difficult in a very short column to describe something abstract - it's much easier to say, that it sounds like something else, so at least you know what you're going for."
That said, how would Johansen describe his own music without comparisons? "It's almost impossible for me to describe it, but, for me, it sounds like an optimistic and kind of expectant piece of music that deals with slightly serious stuff but doesn't really have a sad feel. It's been described to me as electronic-ana, as in Americana. I think that's sort of humble. Some of the sound scapes are sort of ambitious and big and lush, and then there's a humbleness to it as well."
The lush, experimental sound spaciousness is probably a result of the environment in which the album was recorded in Even's home made studio in a converted backyard pigeon coop in Lockerbie, Scotland. "It was very very small, about the size of a bathroom. There was a heavy stench of pigeon shit that was very hard to get rid of."
Even notes that, in creating these spacious sounds, his aim was "not to force anything down anyone's throat," but to experiment and have listeners connect, so "you can make your own picture of what you want to see, so it's not my song any more, it's theirs."
On Your Side is out now through Festival/Mushroom. Magnet hopes to come to Australia early next year.