Wrapping up the 22nd August releases for now and in short form, here is new work from Norway’s MesaVerde and Sweden’s Anna von Hausswolff.
MesaVerde (Norway) – End Credits Insight (single)
I’ll tell you the end credits insight I’d like to have – what are a ‘Key Grip’ and a ‘Best Boy’? It sounds like there’s an orgy going on.
MesaVerde, an Oslo-based quartet, has visited us several times, most recently in 2023 by the look of it.
We’ve established in the past that MesaVerde approximates to a high class British prog band from the 1970s with the added attraction that they are able to write to dance as well, an unusual combination.
And that is pretty much the story with ‘End Credits Insight’ which is (get this) “a story of the relationship with a reluctant prophet, where the contrasting perspectives of the ‘admired’ and the ‘admirer’ are mirrored in dissonance and smooth harmonies.”
It sounds like it could have been included on a Genesis album, probably ‘Foxtrot’. It would have gone well after the King Canute story song.
Let’s call it prog-lite, even happy prog, although neither of the phrases carries the gravitas that this band of vastly experienced musos merits and deserves.
Unlike most songs that fall into this category the melody will get under your skin you’ll keep on playing it just for the main riff alone.
‘End Credits Insight’ is out on Apollon Records.
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MesaVerdeOfficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mesaverde_official/
Anna von Hausswolff (Sweden) – Stardust (single/future album track)
It’s probably because in the eight years I’ve been writing specifically about the Nordic countries the focus has been very much on start ups and other new artists that I’ve produced so little about Anna von Hausswolff, who after all is an established star.
Just one single review, a ‘Trip Down Memory Lane’ article, and a real trip to watch her open for Swans in Manchester, when I arrived so late I only caught half of her last song. Not a great record is it?
But whenever I see her name I have to find out what she is doing now. Only recently I came across videos of two songs, ‘Amends’ and ‘Courage’, that she co-wrote for the 2018 Nobel Prize Banquet in Stockholm, performed live with the Royal Swedish Orchestra and basses from the Royal Swedish Opera Choir and featuring the Royal Swedish Ballet, something she described as one of the best experiences of her life.
As far as I know they have never been studio recorded. Watch them (you must) and you see the only performances ever made.
This from a petite young woman who treats pipe organs the way Keith Emerson used to treat his Hammond C3 even though her feet barely touch the pedals, to such a degree that some famous churches have banned her from playing them.
So the fact that she has a new album, ‘Iconoclasts’, scheduled for release on 31st October – the first new work for years – and on a new label, YEAR0001, was bound to alert me.
On 22nd August she released from it the singles ‘Stardust’ and ‘The Whole Woman’, the latter being a poignant duet with Iggy Pop. For brevity we’ll focus on ‘Stardust’.
As I may have hinted I never know what to expect from her and what I did not anticipate was such a stylish, hard hitting pop rocker, which could have been recorded for an episode of Miami Vice or ‘Manhunter 2.0’ or anything else that Michael Mann has been or might be involved with.
Her creativity is matched only by her unpredictability and on ‘Stardust’ she relegates minimalism to the same degree of popularity as that of the Labour Government in the UK right now as she reinvents maximalism and takes it to the nth degree, her famous wail much in evidence along with a brief death metal growl and what sounds like 100 theremins running amok amidst a cacophony of noise including tribal drum beats.
“I’m sorry” she pleads repeatedly as she acknowledges the need to keep moving on, “but you took me for granted”.
In real life I doubt that anyone will ever do that.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annavonhausswolff
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annavonhausswolff/
X: https://x.com/avonhausswolff
Bandcamp: https://annavonhausswolff.bandcamp.com/
