RISING Norwegian folk artist Siv Jakobsen has a voice that is at once sibilant and honeyed, yet so, so fragile.
And in a recent Instagram post, she confessed that her current single, “Anywhere Else”, the video for which you can watch below, has a real fragility of experience at its core.
She said: “I wasn’t really planning on sharing what the song is about, but with the current situation in the world I think so many of us are feeling extra anxious and afraid – and I hope this song can serve as a small comfort.
“’Anywhere Else’ is a song about anxiety. Not the panicky, all-consuming kind … but a smouldering and quiet kind, a sort of uncomfortable, constant buzzing in the body. This has had me in a soft grip for a long while, and I wrote ‘Anywhere Else’ before I understood what it really was that I was experiencing.
“I thought it was normal to feel a bubbling sense of fear almost all the time. It can make me have a hard time deciding seemingly small things like what I’m going to eat, where I’m going to go on a walk … it’s a constant that I’ve felt for most of my life, without really understanding it.
“Writing ‘Anywhere Else’ was a big part of the process of understanding this for me.”
Siv was brought up in Asker, out on the south-western edges of the wider Oslo conurbation. She has serious musical chops, having studied at the Berklee College of Music in Richmond, MA.
Following an EP, The Lingering, in 2015, and debut LP, The Nordic Mellow, two years on, Siv took a little time to consider the nature of her relationship with songwriting ahead of the release of her second long-playing set, A Temporary Soothing, which is due for release via the Norwegian U Ok? imprint on August 21st.
Siv continues: “There is often a preconceived notion about artists who write ‘sad songs’, that they must be sad people. I made the same presumption and this idea of the ‘suffering artist’ stuck more [when people said] that I seemed like a happy person and how could that be when I wrote such sad songs?
Eventually she saw the catharsis of her process. “This album was conceived from this building fear that I wouldn’t be able to be both happy and a good writer … ultimately, it developed into a broader look upon my relationship with fear and nerves”.
With “Anywhere Else” as a pointer to what the album has to offer, then expect an imtimate set, candlelit and shuffled right in close; with a voice that can soar above and into your chest like Marissa Nadler. It could be a real treat.
Siv also has three British dates scheduled to promote her LP – at the Hug & Pint, Glasgow, on September 8th; at the Eagle Inn, Manchester, on September 9th; and at the Courtyard Theatre, Islington, on September 10th.
A Temporary Soothing will be released via the Norwegian U Ok? Imprint on vinyl and CD on August 21st. To pre-order either format or a variety of special merchandise bundles, visit http://www.sivmusic.com/
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