Victoria Akua – The River (single)
Victoria Akua was amongst us only a few weeks ago when I was taken with her life affirming, live-for-the-moment, bring-it-on song ‘Surrender’ and its complex arrangement.
Now she returns with ‘The River’, which, she says, “is a celebration of friendship and connection; friendships that keep growing and evolving, like a stream of water running freely, softly and wildly.
I’m glad they do that in Denmark, Victoria, over here they get clogged up with fly-tipped household throwaways and Lord knows what else
She originally named it ‘the friendship song’ as three of her closest friends were singing along with her and it has evolved over seven years into what you hear now.
As is often the case with Victoria her music is based on her own journey in life, her experiences and her desire to help people in theirs. With a mantra like that she could be a Miss World contestant!
Smart Alec comments like that aside (I’m in that sort of mood tonight although Slagger Lund has borne the brunt of them) there is something about her songs that are calming.
And yet, (and I’ve no idea if this was intended at all) the guitar chords are strummed with the force of a protest song writer and her vocal delivery is very much to the fore and slightly strident.
I also noticed that the video to the song that is played on Spotify (you should see it if you follow the link here) is not so much one of a stream running softly, but definitely one that is wild, like whitewater rapids.
And then there is a line right at the end of the song that goes against the grain of the otherwise very positive lyrics, namely, “By the water I lay my fears/and by the water I shed my tears”.
That is counterintuitive to the interpretation of the song up to that point and made me wonder if there was a hidden meaning there such as that finding that softly flowing river may be the objective but it could turn out to be harder than you think.
Just wondering…
Find her on:
Website: https://heartofgaia.dk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victoriaakuamusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victoria.akua_/
Photo: Camilla Vodstrup.
Slagger Lund – Careless Wisdom (track from the EP Hjemligheder [Home secrets])
Just for a moment I thought that (Flemming) Slagger Lund had had an epiphany or whatever it is you do to cover George Michael but the track turned out to be ‘Careless Wisdom’ not whisper.
It is the final track on an EP, ‘Hjemligheder’ (Home secrets) – a made up word and which is a clue to the fact that it is a lofi homemade job and in fact a sort of documentary that pulls together early demo-like versions of two tracks from his ‘Maniak’ album of 2022 and two songs from the ‘Nygade & Væk’ album from 2024.
Thus all the tracks have a subtitle, ‘hjemmeoptagelse’ – home recorded.
It is “an EP for the curious, the diggers and for the fans” he says, adding (“sounds pretentious, hehe)!
Alles klar?
Actually it isn’t klar at all because when I Iistened to the song and translated the lyrics it does invoke both that song and its singer; indeed it names both.
I haven’t got my head around the lyrics sufficiently yet to figure it out. It might be bigging up George in the same way Slagger did with the Danish soccer player Brian Laudrup previously and the song also references the ‘Jukebox’ on which George is playing and which is the title of another song on the EP as well as having been previously released (and reviewed in NMC I might add), and in which he was fixated on 1980s British band New Order.
I get the feeling that one day soon an esteemed Professor of Literature from Oxford University is going to put aside his revised interpretation of Hamlet to try to unravel all these cross-references of Slagger’s and slowly to go mad and be taken away by the men in white coats.
One thing I can say for sure is that I haven’t heard such a feast of instrumentation like this before in a Slagger song. He’s either got half a dozen Mellotrons and Nords at his disposal or there’s an orchestra right there in the pub with him.
And as usual the song is all over the place, chopping and changing direction. More E=Mc2 than ABACAB.
And then it plays out to a bastardised sax version of the melody to George’s song.
One on his own. Priceless.
Slagger’s plan is for three EPs over the next couple of years – in between the studio productions – on streaming, and then it’ll end with a full length LP, “someday”.
Find him on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/slaggerlund
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slagger_lund/
