You could have knocked me down with a feather when I discovered that NMC has only featured Ane Brun once before. After all she has been in the business for over 20 years.
And that is in a ‘From the Archives’ post that dates back to her performance at the Saint Michaels’ church in Hamburg during the Reeperbahn Festival in 2018 that I was fortune enough to see. One of five Ane gigs that I’ve attended in all and an absolute knockout.
But NMC exists primarily to help smaller artists so that explains her lack of publicity here. But I couldn’t overlook this latest single, ‘Two in this story’, which reveals a soulful side of her writing.
That title broadly approximates to the English expression that there are two sides to every story and the story is that we can drift though relationships, be they platonic or romantic, always believing that we are ‘at one’ with each other then something happens to upset the applecart.
A verbal disagreement for example, or a misunderstanding.
Suddenly we’re stripped bare and can see each other as we really are.
The ‘norm’ shatters and we begin to wonder not only if it can be rebuilt but if it was built on creaking foundations to start with.
It is the sort of complex storyline that Ane Brun was born to write and it just oozes class.
The key word in the lyrics is “alone”, which appears three times and the way it is delivered is crucial. Heart’s ‘Alone’ is the effort of one person to get another in that state in order to initiate a relationship but in this song it is the state the lovers have found themselves in and from which there may be no return.They can only find the remedy from within themselves.
“Were we together really/were we both in this story
Or were we/Alone”.
So while Ann Wilson’s emphasis on the word is proactive and positive, Ane Brun’s is wistful and ethereal, as if sung by Kate Bush to Heathcliffe out on that wily, windy moor.
Ane Brun’s rich soaring vocal dominates the song and it’s easy to imagine her singing it in the Vatican at the Papal inauguration but the harmonies that appear from time to time are sumptuous, too.
The whole thing is topped and tailed by ominous synthesiser chords that suggest more gravitas to the story than might first appear.
You might recognise the beat. She found a Bryan Ferry-like beat in Logic Pro and adapted it. If you listen carefully you can possibly hear ‘Dance away’. Or maybe I’m still drunk from last night.
Oh, and the production is first class. It is as if she is right there in the room with you.
Ane Brun continues to reinvent herself. Long may it continue.
‘Two in this story’ was released on May 16th via her own record label Balloon Ranger Recordings. The first album in five years is due later this year and dates for a 2025/2026 European tour will be announced later in May.
Find her on:
Website: https://anebrun.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anebrunofficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anebrun/
Photo: Nina Andersson.
