There’s an interesting story behind tonight’s post, which concern’s Norway’s Neon Ion (Natalie Sandtorv).
Natalie has featured here before, the last time being in September 2022 with ‘Cold War’, a song concerning a personal relationship that was on the rocks, not Reagan and Gorbachev.
She’d previously made her mark with electro-pop, which is how she first came to my attention, but with a scholastic background in jazz and an increasing penchant towards R&B that is where she had gravitated, on that track, which I identified as “silky, sultry, a little sexy even, and yet at the same ever so slightly brooding and menacing” and on this one too, ‘Softer’.
Anyway, to that story. She has since experienced a cold war of her own.
It appears that the song was written in the aftermath of her being diagnosed with sudden deafness, on account of her pregnancy, and it was something that changed her life overnight.
It was so profound that she could not envisage returning to music. All sound became “unbearable” and she resorted to wearing earplugs to block out all external noise,
However, she was persuaded to try to sing again as some studio time had already been booked and over a coffee she was persuaded to give it a go.
The song ‘Softer’ arose out of a studio jam, where she let her emotions unfurl through words and melody.
She says that “The world feels like a wave crashed against me while I was out here finding my way.”
So it is a song about dealing with and processing trauma, but also about the belief that everything will get easier with time.
There’s a sense of urgency about the early part of the song through the beat and the strident alarm like sound of a synthesiser aligned with the repeated line “I need to run away”.
Then the onset of the symptoms appears to be epitomised by an unstructured sax heavy free form jazz section within the parameters of that beat which now represents what was previous normalcy.
After that it morphs into an upbeat section with an underlying melody that suggests a 1980s television advert for Scandinavian Airlines System holidays to the Caribbean or perhaps Copacabana Beach which plays out to the end and therefore must be representative of the ‘recovery’ period I guess.
How’s that for a piece of over analysis? You might even say paralysis by analysis. But what matters with any song is what interpretation it engenders in the listener and that’s mine. You will develop yours.
Vocally, well we’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it here. Natalie out-Sade’s Sade. That voice is so metaphorically smooth and voluptuous that no matter where you are, in the living room, in your car, at work on a spreadsheet or laying bricks, you are instantly transported to a better place by the Neon Ion effect.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nataliesandtorvmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neonion_/
