Amongst all the numerous categories, classifications and genres of music – rock, pop, country, rap, metal and so on – there is one category that doesn’t yet exist. If it did, Tulle would win every award going in the genre of ‘creepy’, from the Norwegian Grammy to the Californian one via the rest of the world.
This time, with her new single ‘The Sandman’, she has exceeded all expectations, and they were hardly conservative ones to start with.
I first heard this song about six months ago as a demo and since then Tulle has crafted an absolute monster of song, if you’ll pardon the expression, as we slip deeper into October and the arrival (those pesky kids will soon be knocking hard on your door demanding money with menaces, their adoring parents looking on benignly at the little darlings), of Halloween ‘week’ as it has become.
‘The Sandman’ is, she says, a strange, eerie little tune about being haunted by a past lover in your dreams. About not being able to free yourself from their grip, waking up in cold sweats, seeing them again, night after night. It is a song about the struggle to let go and the turmoil that heartbreak gives. A fever dream of the strange and wonderful.
A little like Emi Li’s ‘Toxic Love’ which we wrote about a few days ago, but set on Elm Street and where she’s “cursed by the sound of your name”.
It genuinely is the stuff of nightmares.
And ironically Tulle has adopted a new (to me) vocal style for it, all soft and warm and cuddly but with latent menace, in the style perhaps of a Wednesday Addams and at odds with the dark nature of the story she unfolds.
Musically, it stretches ‘ethereal’ to a new level, right up into the ether and beyond, underscored by a sinister 3/4 time signature provided in part by a disturbing accordion motif that belongs at a seaside funfair amongst the freak shows – the world’s tallest amputee; Tarantula woman; the pig with two heads.
It’s the waltz of death performed by the Undisputed Queen of the Abnormal and is ripe for syncing to a horror movie.
As music aficionados know there are several songs with the same or similar title, including those by America, The Chordettes, Ed Sheeran (a gentle lullaby!) and most famously Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’, again about night-time fears.
But with Tulle’s song he really does come alive to haunt your darkest hours. Don’t have nightmares!
(Continues after the Spotify link).
The song was co-written with Truls Andersen “in a void, somewhere near Oslo”. A place to be avoided.
Find her on:
Website: https://www.tullemusic.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tullemusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tullemusic/
