Meditations on Love by Susanna
‘Meditations on Love’ by Susanna
Alternative-pop chanteuse Susanna Wallumrød approaches music as if it is a stray black cat in a neighborhood full of superstitious crones. She responds to its jumpy watchfulness with slow-motion poise; answers its hisses with coaxing endearments; and lures it into her abode with promises of warmth and sustenance.
The title of Meditations on Love, the Norwegian musician’s latest long player under her first name alone, indicates a similarly careful approach to an emotion that, whatever its potential for companionship and contentment, can draw more blood than any cat’s claws.
With co-producer Juhani Silvola, Susanna treats each of the 10 tracks as though it’s a fresh page of parchment to be marked with musical calligraphy ranging from the grand-piano notes that drip into the midst of opening song “Everyone Knows” to the Mellotron that gradually saturates “I Was Never Here.”
The inscriptions, so to speak, lean toward classical and jazz, although fellow calligraphers, including violinist and violist Sarah-Jane Summers and drummer Dag Erik Knedal Andersen, ably support Silvola and Susanna’s inversion of classical and jazz expectations.
In one instance, Andersen’s studiously varied percussion adds nervy textures to “I Took Care of Myself,” strengthening Susanna’s declaration of departure. In another, saxophonist Harald Lassen’s mellow exhalations contrast with Susanna’s tense lingering on low keyboard tones during the uneasily smooth ballad “Elephant Song.”
Sometimes, the musical ink thins or spatters: “A Swallow” might generate small gusts of bowed and plucked strings and synthesizer mists, but it is as austere as the northernmost reaches of Susanna’s homeland in January, while “Where Has the Love Gone” creaks and flitters as though Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis discovered how to collaborate with Windows 95.
Yet Susanna’s pensively dramatic voice is as bold a signature as anything from Tori Amos, Joanna Newsom, and perhaps even Kate Bush. Her Meditations are unsettling and sensitive, like whiskers or an anxious purr.
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