root salad Karen Mose
The Danish singer (think Phønix, Karen & Helene) tells Chris Nickson about her solo album.
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or several years now, Karen Mose has been the singer with Danish folk band Phønix. She’s stepped outside that role once to join with vocalist Helene Blum for the lovely Solen duo disc, which offered a hint of her spreading her wings and now, at long last, she’s taken solo flight with Vingefang. It’s a disc she first mooted a couple of years ago, covering material that had been part of her childhood (she’s the daughter of Keld Nørgaard, a member of Lang Linken, a band that sparked the first Danish folk revival in the 1970s).
The result is more than tender years refracted through an adult prism. The arrangements are adventurous and thoughtful, and there’s even the intro- duction of Mose’s own, very impressive songwriting.
“I’m glad I did this solo album at this point in my life,” she says reflectively. “At 30 I’m reconciled with the singer that I am. You can do anything in the studio, but now I know my strengths and weaknesses, and I wanted to sound truthful and real. Five years ago I wouldn’t have had that self-confidence.” Notably, none of her band colleagues are on hand here, but that was deliberate. “The whole idea was to meet new musicians and make music with other people and other musical worlds. We’d been very busy with Phønix for a long time and I hadn’t had time for anything else.”
She was lucky, perhaps, in that there was no deadline for her to deliver the disc. In fact, her only rule was “There was no deadline. We had to work until I thought it was right. Sometimes you can’t do that and you regret it afterwards. There was no pressure on this, so I could listen critically. Having a small home studio [at producer Mads Riishede’s house] meant I could afford it. And I felt in the end it was the best way, very intimate. I was doing pro- ducer stuff and everyone was close to me physically when we played. People had an opinion, everyone was part of everything.”
Although much of the CD is based in traditional music, there’s one song that stands out as radically different – Sig Mig, which is a Danish version of the country song I Really Don’t Want To Know, and even features pedal steel.
“There’s another feel to it because it’s not ethereal,” she admits. “But for me it all comes from the same place as the other songs; I learned them all from my family. It took time for me to seek other ways for these songs because I’ve always known them in specific ways, singing when my family was together. And it’s a hopeful song where the others are sad. Some of
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these pieces I hadn’t actually sung before, my mother always sang them or someone else did.”
One Danish piece that might be familiar to non-natives is Lørdag Aften, one of the country’s best-known folk songs, but deliv- ered here with a twist, a melody that’s not the one usually associated with the words.
“The melody is a variation from a dif- ferent part of Denmark,” she explains. “Originally the lyrics were different on this melody. It’s a very well-known song and I wanted to do it a little differently.” Her version is stripped all the way down, a model of gorgeous economy with just her voice accompanied by bouzouki played by Jens Ulvsand from Trio Mio. “It was going to be a produced song, but Jens could only be there for one day. We recorded just the bouzouki and voice and decided later that it didn’t need more. I’d prepared for the day and we did it in one take.”
One very pleasant surprise is the appearance of two Mose compositions on the disc, fitting in well among the others and of very high quality. The title cut, which kicks everything off, is especially astonishing for the woozy, psychedelic quality of the string arrangement, all cour- tesy of Hal Parfitt-Murray.
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“I had some doubt about it,” Mose says in retrospect. “I didn’t know if it was representative of the rest of the album – but I’m glad now. I heard people compar- ing it to all sorts of other things when we did it, things I never thought about. But looking back, I think that’s right. And that string section was Hal just recording the same thing over and over!”
ith Vingefang now out, the question is what will Mose do to promote it? Will she be playing dates with some of the backing musicians? At this point many of her plans are still up in the air, although she does think the next disc – yes, she’s looking ahead – will be all her own material.
“I plan on touring this at some point, but I’ve done this upside down and back- wards. I’ve done a lot with Phønix and I felt this album has to be done in its own way. I have the time and energy to do something about it now. But I don’t have an agent, and I’m hoping one will take me…it would make things easier.”
And that should make any agents with a smidgen of sense reach for the phone right now.
www.myspace.com/karenmose F
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