Music Blogs

Girls in glasses. Demure librarians intent on sexual revolution. Twisted sisters taking us down, but ohhhh, it feels so good.

Swedish singer-songwriter Anna Ternheim sings like a sad dove, composes like she's channeling Bjork/Tony Hatch/Nick Drake/Sandy Denny, and even has the lovely temerity to cover Fleetwood Mac's "Little Lies." Anna grabs our heart, spins it around on her doe eyed visage and leaves us stranded, heartsick, and sated. With Halfway To FivePoints (Decca), the Swedish star hits the U.S. with her first full length release--resistance is futile.

While domestic major labels push miniskirt-wearing sweet little things who offer acoustic ditties with all the sincerity of high school hopefulness and milk shake dreams (Blue Note's latest chanteuse, Priscilla Ahn, comes to mind), Ternheim manages to combine alluring, apparent naïveté with something more troubling, like perhaps she's just dropped a tab of an illegal substance into mother's tea, or that My Bloody Valentine and Tim Buckley are as much an influence and destination as the desire to become famous.

Halfway To FivePoints overflows with gorgeous production, Ternheim's yearning voice and her songs' simple instrumentation often caught up in a threatening sky filled with soaring strings, twinkling sound effects, and soul rattling (grave robbing?) rhythms. "To Be Gone" is a song displaced, Ternheim singing "Leave the body, leave the mind" like some chant for both spirit release and sensory deprivation. As dark as a cold Stockholm day, as odd as a young child with mean, miserable thoughts, the song makes you want to reach out and comfort Anna just as it repels you. She's a demon seed, sweet soul child wallowing in bad intent, a blonde/blue eyed folk singer who could freeze out a fireplace.

Anna goes deep and depressed on "No Subtle Men," a sad'n'simple tale of yet another night lost in the bar scene. By song's end, Anna is alone, no lover in sight, much less a friend. When Anna sings "slipped my mind," it sounds like "slit my mind" and your ears move closer to catch her pain. When in recent memory has a U.S. artist sung so eloquently of the universal need to be loved, regardless of age or demographic?  "No Subtle Men" is surely one of the most beautiful odes to loneliness ever written.

The rickety piano plonking "Girl Laying Down" catches a cabaret mood, like Ute Lemper slumming with college kids. "Bridges" is a sweet tone poem to a lover, though Anna may turn the knife when he's not looking. "Today Is A Good Day" finds Anna singing directly from the heart, whispering in our ear, a glowing piano and a sunny beat insisting that it's good to be alone. "I still feel fine, I guess/My life was a mess when I shared it with you." Anna's alone. Just like we like her. See http://www.annaternheim.com/

Anna Terheim: "To Be Gone"  (WMA, 2:48)

Natalia Clavier's Sweet Honey Nectar: Brought to you by the same DJ minds  who gave you Thievery Corporation, Natalia Clavier combines Argentinean Tango, sun streaked electronica and one hell of an alluring voice on Nectar (ESL). She's singing Spanish, so who knows what it's all about, but in songs like the opener, "El Arbol," Clavier rises above simple electronic tomfoolery to sway our senses in her direction.

A friend, touring compadre and currently wife of ESL artist Federico Aubele, Clavier says that "Songs are in the air and I just pluck them out," no doubt alluding to Nectar's bounty of sun streaked tracks. Like the music of Thievery Corporation, Nectar bounds over big, air buoyed, gossamer beats, dissonant sound effects and unidentifiable sound found atmospheres. It's like walking into a bar in D.C. and walking out two hours later into the hot sun of Buenos Aires.