When I received a piece of PR from the representatives of Drea I at first thought it might be the Los Angeles-based one for whom I have a lot of respect.
Any disappointment that it wasn’t her was quickly tempered by the early realisation that this Drea was about to release a little gem of an EP which I got an early listen to.
Drea in this case is, like her US counterpart, an Andrea, specifically the indie-pop solo project of Andrea Ådland, a Norwegian singer-songwriter, vocalist, and musician based in Bergen.
Before taking the plunge as a solo artist, Andrea was a member of the duo Finding Neo and the band Atari, and worked as a backing vocalist for artists like Hannah Storm and Hedda Mae.
She gained attention with her debut EP ‘Letters to My Bitter Self’, featuring tracks like ‘Want me dead’, which we reviewed in September 2024, had already been labelled an “Indie sensation” in Norway and been praised by the country’s leading pop culture radio show NRK P3 as “a rare songwriting talent”.
We identified ‘Want me dead’ as something in the Alanis Morissette mould, like a sequel to ‘Ironic’ called ‘Chaotic’ in which she faces down a tormentor whose animosity might be real or imaginary.
Her style was of melancholic, guitar-driven indie-pop with honest, raw lyrics about serious subjects like mental health and not so serious ones like life’s frustrations.
With this latest EP, ‘Sucker for Love and Heartbreaks’ she both mellows and gets more personal, focusing on her own intimate experiences and relationship hurdles, contrasting the initial joys and longing of falling for someone (the ‘love’) with the inevitable pain and distress that can follow (the ‘heartbreak).
The title itself captures the duality of being a “sucker” who is willing to dive headfirst into love, fully aware of the emotional risks and potential for heartbreak.
The EP was written as a cathartic channel to personal healing after the event, leading the listener through the various stages of her breakup, from the initial bitterness, to pretending everything is just fine thank you, then to seeking comfort in someone new (what we used to call being on the rebound) then missing the person you were so sure you needed to leave behind.
Yes, we’ve all been there but few of us can document it quite like this.
This focus track ‘How to heal a broken heart’ is a song about desperately searching for a quick fix to get over someone you’ve either lost or soon will do. It captures how difficult it can be to let go when a part of you still wants to go back, while realising that you might not be able to move on, on your own, thus finding yourself repeatedly searching for reassurance and comfort in something, or someone, new.
She seems somehow to fall between ‘name’ American singer songwriters and lyrically strong storytellers like Mary Chapin Carpenter, Suzanne Vega and Fiona Apple and more Scandinavian home grown examples like Denmark’s Ida Wenøe.
Some of her lyrics are choice: “I’ve listened to podcasts on how to heal a broken heart but it’s mostly bullshit that I’ve heard before”.
There’s something rough and raw about the recording, too, like it was made in someone’s garden shed. She goes out of her way to distance herself from shiny pop materialism and to present herself as just one of us, dealing with life’s little crises as best she can, while the 6/4 metre (I’m guessing, I’m not a muso) gradually sucks you into her world and won’t let go.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrea.aadland (Personal page)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreadreamusic
Website: https://www.viftrecords.com/drea/ep
Photo credit: Nicolas Munoz.
