Elise Vatsvaag

It’s been a while since I’ve posted some straight up female singer/songwriter stuff, so I’m excited to have stumbled upon a goodie last weekend in Elise Vatsvaag. Vatsvaag, out of Norway, is releasing a new (free) song on the 10th of every month for her album, This Is Not My Music. I took a strong liking to her March single, “Vena Amoris,” so now you find yourselves hearing about Vatsvaag. Isn’t it crazy how these things work?

Vatsvaag has a youthful, precious voice, sounding awfully similar to the Hsu twins of Knox Road favorite, Exit Clov. - Knox Road

«With well appropriated melodic hooks, a charming voice and a solid production, Elise Vatsvaag is one of the most exciting new pop artists Urørt has heard in a long time.» - NRK Urørt

Look at this pretty Norwegian lady singer, and listen to the equally pretty pop tune that she’s just made.

And it’s a free download too, GRAB it below, by fondling the arrow button on the right hand side of the soundcloud stream.

It’s ‘Neighborhood’ – a bright and cheerful song with a delightfully sunny disposition. It’s a bit of an odd one really. A hugely pleasant toe-tapper, but we sort of felt let down with the melody of the chorus. It (the chorus) starts off really well, and oozes potential to be big and poptastic, but it’s almost like she then intentionally tones it down. Or maybe we’ve just spent too much of our lives listening to Thomas G:son schlager compositions. In any case, it’s only a small gripe. On the whole, we like the song. And especially the catchy post-chorus hook.

‘Neighborhood’ is taken from her album ‘This Is Not My Music’. It’s an eight track record, with a new song being unveiled and released as a free download every month on her website. So keep visiting to unearth more treasures such as this. - Scandipop

This song was nearly featured last week, but it didn’t fit in the mix quite right so I put it aside for a week and now look.

Sparse and elegiac, “After the Storm” uses what sounds like a full-fledged string quartet to generate volume and intensity in a song that otherwise secures its power from restraint and sweetness. After the real-life storm that affected so many people in the Eastern U.S. last week, we can all use a bit of restraint and sweetness.

Nothing has ever been this clear before
After the storm I have no fear at all
No fear at all

Vatsvaag is Norwegian and while her lyrics occasionally betray a non-native-speaker’s tentative syntax, the overall effect, almost counter-intuitively, is one of poignant authenticity. She sings with a clear tone but also without much sustain (i.e., she doesn’t hold her sung notes for long), which lends a soft-spoken intimacy to her delivery. The song has a traditional structure—verse, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, repeat with bridge—but her tender, affecting melodies expand gently beyond the typical eight measures in the pre-chorus and again in the chorus, which then melts into the instrumental tumult provided by the strings. This shows yet again that a song cannot be reduced merely to its words, and that it’s almost always the subtle musical effects rather than simply a turn of phrase that sends the impact of a song from the head to the heart.

Vatsvaag has been releasing a series of free to download songs throughout 2012. The first four were then gathered, earlier this year, into an EP called This Is Not My Music #1; after the second four have been released (song number 8 arrives later this month), This Is Not My Music #2 will be released. “After the Storm” was the seventh song, released in October. - Fingertips music