It was only last week that we featured a Norwegian artist, Bellefolie, who has a predilection for writing about alienation, isolation, existential dilemmas and the absurdity of life. As you do.
Bellefolie takes the traditional, classical, detached approach to these matters while her compatriot Marte Eberson, who released her third studio album, ‘Lights from the Ocean’, this week, prefers a more personalised slant on them, referencing what has become inherent global angst to her own private experiences as a single woman ploughing her own furrow while caught up in the social swirl of 21st Century Oslo, which by all accounts makes the New York of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities look like Disneyland.
She has come a long way in the decade since the sometimes frantic, electro pop of ‘Mad Boy’ to a philosophical treatise to music here that might in time be discussed in the same breath as those of Sartre and Kierkegaard.
You think I’m kidding? The album suggests dark ocean currents – anger, fear, bullying, coercion, negative thoughts, depression, aggression – that dictate the mental state of the world right now. We might even give those currents names: Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Musk, Epstein, Putin, Xi, Khamenei, Kim Jong Un (insert your own).
But illuminating this inner darkness that results from these turbulent geopolitical currents is the reflected sunlight representative of moments of light, clarity, and resilience – the ‘Lights from the Ocean’, like a lighthouse or beacon leading the floundering vessel of Humanity away from the rocks of Despair.
I see this sunlight of Marte’s in the same vein as that which dominated the beach scene in Camus’ L’Étranger, when on a boiling hot day the anti-hero Meursault and his girlfriend engage in the only happy event in the entire novel, spending time on the Algiers shoreline in that blinding light and stifling heat and swimming with casual acquaintances until Meursault suddenly and unaccountably wanders off and shoots dead ‘an Arab’ with whom he’d had a minor altercation previously.
“And each successive shot was another loud fateful rap on the door of my undoing” as those currents rolled back in.
And that is why I’m not kidding.
So this is Marte’s “ordinary life” (I’m not sure there is anything ‘ordinary’ about it) which survives the daily global onslaught by way of latching on to those precious moments we cherish but experience increasingly less frequently – shared laughter, an unexpected but welcome message, a feeling that we are making progress with any of the many personal issues that beset us.
At the same time Marte can’t divorce herself entirely from the heavily personalised approach she took on the previous album, ‘Free’, in which she demonstrated forcibly her desire to remain unshackled and to roam the world of relationships as a free agent even though it sometimes killed off those relationships.
I suspected that outlook might continue to make its presence felt and it does on the opening track ‘Hurt my Soul’for example, in which she “loves him and it hurts her soul”. She “needs him to be the fire” but he’s a damp squib.
She’s Jane Eyre to Mr Rochester; Elizabeth Bennet to Mr Darcy in Pride & Prejudice. Bridget Jones to Any man. She has become the architect of her own downfall and didn’t need any external assistance to reach that point.
The second track, ‘Reconsideration’, replete with heavy doom-laden minor key guitar chords and tolling bells, is quite a different affair and asks questions about the deeper meaning behind the first one.
My reading is that it acknowledges absolute power and the inability to avoid its ramifications if you get ensnared with it. It might have been written by Virginia Giuffre about an American financier or a British Royal. You get the drift.
“I wanna pull you out to the sea/I wanna sink you quietly/I wanna hold your voice under here/Every second that you’re near” (sic).
‘Eyes wide shut’ logically drew me to the Kubrick film and its theme of subconscious desires and sexual fantasies.
And if you want to find that in it, you can. Try:
“Playing with fire, is what I wanna do/Don’t know the outcome, when I am here with you/With eyes wide shut.”
“Smoke is in the air, bodies running hot/We know it’s wrong, but still we take the shot” (The orgy scene?)
In a sexy, sultry, smoking ballad those last two lines are delivered straight out of an erupting volcano.
The mere title ‘Manhattan’evokes so much imagery just on its own but it’s a mysterious track in which the city is merely a catalyst for a short story of displacement. Grandma has passed on back home and it conjures up memories of childhood delight in her presence.
But it also hints at the bigger question – has the world become so ‘global’ that we willingly detach ourselves from loved ones merely to satisfy our craving for ‘experiences’?
And is that a Theremin playing the song out? Praise the Lord!
A sumptuous song, it could have been taken from a 1950s romantic film starring Grace Kelly or Judy Garland.
Start looking for your Tinsel Town residence now, Marte.
‘Hiding my emotions’ is a track that implies much by saying little. On the surface it seems to be about one half of a relationship awaiting the return of another and sleeplessly wondering if that return will take place at all or whether the other has been distracted by yet another. Or by the bar, or the casino.
She’s “Waiting for the light/I hope to see it soon”, which could mean the individual or the dawn that would signify a reset.
Reading more into it, one might extrapolate awaiting ‘the light’ into an allegorical statement for the end of a period of darkness for everyone, such as the relentless dark and cold of a Ukraine winter, under constant bombardment. And spending the night praying for the return of a soldier from the front line.
For the first time that I am aware of in her solo career Marte has teamed up with a male vocalist, namely Paal Flaata, to record ‘Hold you again’.
He is best known as front man of Midnight Choir, and if Andrea Bocelli is ‘the Voice of God’ then Paal is Jesus. His sweet, soulful, dulcet tenor tones not only add much to the song but also encourage Marte to raise her own game even higher.
The result is a sumptuous heart wrencher of a duet that bears comparison with the leading male/female ballads of the last 50 years – your Diana Ross & Lionel Richie/Peaches & Herb/Elton John & Kiki Dee/Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton/Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell. All of them.
It really is that good. Trust me.
And “The times look forward but here I stay/looking for you in yesterday” is one of the smartest lyrics I’ve heard recently.
A nod here to the producer, Lars Voldsdal for bringing back more than just a mere flavour of the rich production of those grand previous era masterpieces.
The tone is distinctly more melancholic as she touches on someone she cannot touch any longer, let alone hold, and about the inherent misery of missing someone.
In ‘Start over again’, an early single, Marte was still making the transition from the state of mind which occupied the ‘Free’ album, one of carefree, Bohemian lifestyle.
With ‘Start over again’ there is a different tack, as if she rues not holding onto something that she should have done in the past; that she has allowed something really important to slip through her fingers and escape and that she may never see it again. Whatever it is, it transcends mere nostalgia and carries on where the “looking for you in yesterday” line in the previous track left off.
The whole scenario is similar to that of Arcade Fire’s song ‘Suburban War’ in which the protagonist laments the lost days of his suburban youth.
While I am convinced Marte is often writing about a particular person or people in her songs there is another possible explanation here, namely that she is merely articulating a desire to return to ‘the simpler old days’ when everything moved at a slower pace and you weren’t forever being bombarded and bothered by the internet with its endless pap and fake news; Amazon and Netflix; YouTube; podcasts; Zoom chats; Facebook; Instant Gran; TikkyTokky, X, Y and Gen Z…
The production this time is clinical (there’s that Theremin again?) while at the same time being towards the Phil Spector or Trevor Horn end of the spectrum, each instrument shimmering with its own importance, merging into a whirlpool that sucks you in to where Marte is waiting for you.
And if someone had told me it was the latest from Lana Del Ray I wouldn’t have argued.
The Apocalypse is in the House in ‘I wanna get out’. The sky is nuclear red and a zombie choir sings her name as if she’s joined a death cult on the day of Armageddon.
It’s an understated yet still powerful track, smartly penned, that asks more questions than it provides answers. It might be personalised down to a single individual, even a child runaway, or a woman escaping a brutal partner after years of dithering (“You left too soon/You stayed too long/You played it safe/You played it wrong” but equally it could be interpreted as a global desire for political change.
Or the choir might be of Marte’s ex-lovers. Or something else entirely. Your call.
And there’s a tidy little guitar solo, possibly provided by Pop, Norway’s top jazz guitarist, Jon Eberson, to play it out, and which perhaps might have continued for a few more bars.
Penultimate track ‘Holding on’sees Marte clinging on to the last vestiges of a relationship that went pear-shaped as if the song’s subject was her last chance of salvaging something romantically meaningful out of her life and with the same determination she has manifested in other tracks.
“Your careless ways, your blind regrets/I’m your mistake someone you break
So why am I holding on to you/Holding on to you”.
When Marte comes to write her memoirs the bookstore queue will be the length of Oslo’s Karl Johans Gate.
The poppy chorus in this one is an unexpected and pleasant surprise.
‘Ocean Light’ (or Lights – it is the former on Spotify and the latter on the lyrics sheet and in the song)wraps up the album with a rich tapestry of cinematic music that could well have been included in the score for the film Titanic.
Replete again with metaphor and allegory I’m inclined to interpret those lights as belonging to the cruise liner or ocean-going yacht that takes Marte away from this messed up world and sets her free.
And so, with that freedom she’s come back around full circle to the sentiments of the previous album. She’s never really been away.
I’m reminded that a band Marte used to play with, Highasakite, which at that time was probably the biggest in Norway, successfully shifted its gaze from a dark micro personal outlook to an even darker global macro one 10 years ago, between their first and second international albums, while never losing site of the personal.
Marte Eberson has done much the same here with a piece of work that easily stands comparison while emphasising the latent power of her personal sanguinity.
There is lushness and sensuality in the album that has found even greater heights than what was evident in her ‘Free’ album.
She can be like a very high calibre cabaret artist at times and then in the following song demonstrate powerful influences from artists of previous eras (1950s-70s especially) and which pervade the album.
I’m hard pressed to think of anyone in the whole of the Nordic countries that has cornered that particular market to the same degree. She is as close to unique as it gets.
The only (mild) disappointment is I have that the vocalisations on all the tracks are similar, her soft head voice predominating, when I know she has the capability to produce a more powerful, demonstrative chest one too and even to belt when it’s called for and arguably it might be on one or two tracks here.
I read someone comparing Marte to Weyes Blood. But Natalie Mehring can convey the sudden explosive drama that is not yet quite so evident in Marte’s songs. That is, though, the only thing that separates them.
All in all, this is a connoisseur’s album; not for casual listening. As it is out on vinyl you should find it in the classic section of your record store along with those of Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald.
Be patient. If it isn’t there right now it will be, one day.
NMC score: 9/10
(Continues after the Spotify link)
The album is out on Oslo Records.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marteebersonmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marteeberson/
