When we wrote about a previous single, ‘Skipped a step’,  I noted that while they are billed as ‘post-punk with a hint of shoegaze’ (or something like that), what I heard was the art rock of the likes of Arcade Fire and one song in particular, their ‘Month of May’.

(‘Skipped a step’, incidentally, has been nominated   in the category ROCK SINGLE OF THE YEAR at the Danish Alternative Music Awards).

And here they are 10 months later pretty much doing the same thing, and highly effectively, with their third single, ‘Bloody Feeling’.

I don’t know quite what ‘Bloody Feeling’ is about apart from that it “thematises the strangely cathartic nature of chaos and self-destruction”, but there are plenty of allusions to the world of boxing in their publicity and this song sounds like Mike Tyson just came hurtling out of his corner at the first round bell determined to finish the bout and leave the building before the prawn sandwich brigade have even taken their seats.

It comes out of the blocks at the speed of a bullet and doesn’t let up for three minutes and 20 seconds at which point a technical knockout is declared.

Helping it along the way from that red corner is a bass line like a pneumatic drill operated by Peter Hook; percussion (fundamentally hi-hat , kick bass and snare drum) like a lovelorn, out of control oil rig that’s just hot a reservoir of the black stuff; and an overall impact like a medieval mass flogging.

These guys can rock; there’s no two ways about it.

I’ve got a bloody feeling that it will soon be Monday morning but I’m all the better prepared for it now.

They say this is their “third and final” single. I hope that doesn’t mean they are calling it a day already, rather that they omitted “before the EP (or album) is released.”

Find them on:

Website: https://baench.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Baenchofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baench_official/

The post BÆNCH (Denmark) – Bloody Feeling (single) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

And even more so in the situation they are in now, looking in reasonable physical condition but returning to loved ones who wonder if they will ever again be able to pick up their lives. Might they even have experienced Stockholm syndrome, and be about to become incommunicable and go into a downward mental spiral?

And the worst case scenario is that those girls, who have had to steel themselves throughout their captivity, will even reject the love and affection that is being showered on them by their families.

That broadly is the subject of MAGLY’s (Ditte Bissenbacker) latest single, ‘They turn to ghosts’.

She’s no stranger to stressful situations. Back in September we reported on her last single, ‘Honesty’, in which she lamented the sudden ending of what she considered to be a mutually strong and important relationship and the lack of trust that quickly arose as it fell apart.

This time she relates how she deals with anxiety and how you can end up turning people away because of your own insecurity in a fragile situation and even though help and comfort is actually what you need.

She says, “My biggest fear is that my closest friends and family might suddenly leave me. Unfortunately, this has happened a few times when insecurity and anxiety took over, and I ended up pushing away the ones who only wanted to help.”

Or that if they don’t turn away, she’ll drag them down into her dark pit of despair. A No Win situation.

‘They turn into ghosts’ is epitomised by gently, calmly delivered verses, in which she might be chatting to a psychologist about her symptoms like Alanis Morissette contemplates irony; and in contrast uncontrolled manic choruses, as if she’s trying to emphasise the bipolarisation of her predicament.

For example –

Verse:

“I know it doesn’t make any sense to be afraid of planes/one in a million chances of dying/but I’m convinced every time that it will be my day/the one in a million people not lying

Chorus:

“Why did I say I’d be fine? Just leave me alone for the night/Why did I let you all go away, when I needed you all to stay?”

And smart lyrics like that persist throughout.

There’s something about the meter that she sings in as well, as if you’re riding pillion with her on a runaway horse, while her effortless vocal delivery in the upper ranges in particular is exceptional.

And it’s a damn catchy song to boot. A tune.

There are numerous markers here which single her out as a singer/songwriter who is going places. With or without the family and friends in tow.

The song was co-written with Swedish producer Oskar Karlström and English songwriter Lily Williams.

Find her on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Maglymusic Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maglymusic/

The post Magly (Denmark) – They turn to ghosts (single) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

The two previous singles were collaborations with the Swedish artist Welt, about whom I know nothing, and a Danish one, Lydmor, about whom I know a lot and I’m disappointed I never got around to covering that one in particular.

But here we are now with a Moyka collaboration, an artist we’ve only featured a couple of times but who evidently knows a thing or two about synth melodies.

Add that to the fact that since 2022 anamé has been releasing its creations through the British label Anjunabeats (racking up over 100 million streams) and you pretty well know what to expect. At least your feet do.

‘Colder’ is a reissue of an earlier song, released six years ago by Moyka and one that I recognised; I might have seen her perform it at Øya Festival.

It could be the title of the theme to a Disney sequel to ‘Frozen’; it definitely carries sufficient gravitas in the melody.

The original was a sad song in which she was distinctly feeling the chill, “our hearts” no longer being “on fire” and I assume she was chastising herself for letting the relationship end with a lyric like “I love when it hurts”.

So what has Anamé brought to the party?

Well they’ve lopped almost a minute off it for starters, and shortened the gloomy opening bars so Moyka is more rapidly into her vocal bit.

There’s a flittering synthesiser addition which sounds like someone shredding a harp.

There’s a pounding bass synth rhythm to replace the percussive one on the original, which has ‘House’ stamped through it, and which grows in intensity so that it almost drowns the poor girl out at the end.

It’s faster than the original, there is no slacking of pace or force as it progresses and by the end you can’t get an image of Kylie and Stock Aitken Waterman out of your mind.

It’s made for dancing to and I’m sure there will be a lot of that in Oslo, Stockholm, Bergen and further afield these next few months and quite possibly across the Med through the summer as well.

If such treatment is justified in the case of what was a rather melancholic song is up to you to decide.

Whichever way you look at it, it’s still a bloody good song.

Find them on:

Anamé:

Website: https://www.anamemusic.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aname.ofc

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anamemusic/

Moyka

Website: https://www.moykamusic.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moykamusic

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moykamusic/

X: https://x.com/moykamusic

The post Anamé (Norway/Sweden) & Moyka (Norway) – Colder (single) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

Firstly, that’s a hell of a lot to live up to.

And I remember talking to Jason Bentley (no relation) of KCRW at the Reeperbahn Festival a few years back about Calvi’s latest album and why he should give it a listen, his show having previously showcased her, only to be met by a put down that she was “too derivative” of Harvey.

That’s the problem when you all move in a similar circle. You can all start to sound like each other.

So does Sofia Härdig offer anything that differentiates her from those other, comparable, art rock musicians?

‘Pale Fire’  is taken from Sofia’s forthcoming album set for release on 11^th April via Icons Creating Evil Art / Bark At Your Owner, two great labels for labels, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I browsed through some of the comments made about her by other publications, including some big names.

“…never been on more rumbustious form”; “She fathoms and conjures up the dark sides of the soul, love, sex” (that’s from the intriguingly titled CRACK magazine); and “oscillates between Post-punk, goth-rock, Placebo and Nick Cave.” Quite a set of endorsements.

‘Pale Fire’ came out of an intense period of creative isolation during which she wrote hundreds of songs from “a cave of writing.” It was embellished by Bebe Risenfors, who has worked with Tom Waits and Elvis Costello.

She likes to see her songs as representative of short stories or novellas she has written but which were presumably considered better to see the light of day as songs.

I’ll lay my cards on the table; I can’t decipher exactly what ‘Pale Fire’ is about. It’s a euphemism for something that is holding her back, while she vacillates between inertia (“Moments of nothing”) and frenzy (“A wall of sound”). (Bipolarisation?)

There is more of the former than the latter (“I am a church bell/That tells of the hour”). (The repetitive passing of time).

She’s confused and “Can’t see through this pale fire”. That could be a reference to the impregnability of social norms, to a movement – political, radical perhaps – that she can’t help get over the line. Influencing a vote for a Prime Minister in an election; to change laws related to feminist concerns, attitudes to trans people, the potential is endless.

I even toyed with the idea the song referenced Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire, in which some of the characters are so mysterious and translucent you could begin to doubt if they are real.

You and I could spend all night discussing it so let’s turn our attention to how she puts it across. Here there is more certainty.

It’s almost like a demonstration or an uprising as it grows in intensity from a relatively anaemic opening with simple chords and common time beat as layers of piano and strings and backing vocals are added, then frittering away into almost an air of desperation towards the end.

I might be completely off beam with that interpretation but ultimately, as I’ve often argued one way the talent of a songwriter can be measured is by his or her ability to create images in the mind of the listener and she is more than capable of doing that.

And in that sense alone she is right up there with the Smiths, Harveys and Calvis of this world.

The album ‘Lighthouse of Glass’ is set for release on April 11^th.

Find her on:

Website: https://www.sofiahardig.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sofiahardigmusic

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sofiahardig

Photo Credit: Jessica Nettelblad.

The post Sofia Härdig (Sweden) – Pale Fire (single/future album track) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

Separate projects seem to have been the reason for the long wait but that previous single alone easily convinced me that another album would be worth the wait, and it will arrive on March 21^st, along with the spring equinox, titled ‘IV’.

‘Big Sleep’ was a deeply satisfying song on account of its musicality, a transition from a sombre parade to a victory anthem, and its lyricism, which examined dreams.

The “unlikely scenario of gothic metal meets dream pop” is how it came across to me.

So I approached this lead single from the album, ‘Horrors’, with a degree of expectation.

There is an air of cinematic grandeur about their work and ‘Horrors’ is no exception, drawing inspiration from the theme to The Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Arnie ‘n all.

Set to a repeating scaled down version of the film’s ‘dum dum dum…dum dum’ beat it is quite a psychy piece otherwise, building with layer heaped upon layer of synthesiser and guitar into a monster that could have been the 11^th track on ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ tripping the light fantasticbefore it changes direction in the last quarter to something decidedly more ominous and portentous.

It does that because it was written while Henna was pondering subjects as “the climate catastrophe, the global rise of fascism, the walls protecting inequality and the unknown future of the new generation.”

These are collectively the horrors they perceive.

“Will you be safe from harm

I don’t know

How could I

What horrors will come”

This is where I have to deviate from the script because I’ve never been convinced there is or will be a ‘climate crisis’; because ‘fascism’ has totally lost its meaning in 2025 when it gets banded about by anyone that opposes your viewpoint; the walls protecting inequality seem to be pretty unsturdy to me; and no generation has ever been secure in its own future.

But then I’m a child of the Cold War so I know a little about that.

(Indeed, one of the more memorable lines from Terminator 2 is John Connor’s “There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”)

However, I’ve never let my opinion stand in the way of appreciating a good song. And this is a very good song. I’m sure the album will be, too.

Hasta la Vista, Baby. They’ll soon be back.

‘IV’ will be released on the Soliti Recordings label on 21st March 2025.

The video was filmed by Janne Immonen, and edited by Henna E. Hietamäki.

Find them on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catsoftransnistria

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catsoftransnistria/ Bandcamp (track): https://catsoftransnistria.bandcamp.com/track/horrors

The post Cats of Transnistria (Finland) – Horrors (single/future album track +video) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

‘Beautiful Madness’ is how it translates and that instantly transports me back to the Paris of my misspent youth (just after the Revolution, it seems that long ago), happily frittering away my days on the Left Bank and nights wandering the length of the Boulevard de Clichy and the Place Pigalle.

Isabell is Norwegian, out of Bergen presently, and a French speaker, so I guess that’s how that French moniker was picked up.

It seems she has a multimedia background as a film and TV writer and as part of an international network for female producers so she hasn’t just arrived out of left field.

Having said that this is only her/their third single, the previous two – the debut ‘In the Clouds’ and the follow up, ‘Modern Apathy’ – having picked up regular airplay across Scandinavia and in France. Mon Dieu!

 I was taken aback by the quality of it.

‘Your Gates’ (not Bill), is about being in the process of losing someone, and how far you are willing to go to reach them. In this case it is by “cracking open your gates” and “taking on all your pain”, as if exorcising a malign spirit.

Reading the lyrics, I understand that ‘losing someone’ means literally that, not just a broken love affair, and that the song is along the lines of Shakespears Sister’s ‘Stay’, itself a very powerful song. (‘In the Clouds’ dealt with overwhelming grief).

And ‘Your Gates’ is just that. Powerful.

It switches back and forward between a sultry ballad and a tremendous synth and cello-led cinematic anthem and drips with emotion from beginning to end.

Ms Engelsen is a terrific vocalist and equally adept at handling the softer parts and the spine tingling ones, along with the transition between them.

She says her inspiration comes from a Who’s Who of female Nordic stars including Björk, Susanne Sundfør, AURORA and Emilie Nicolas, and with Nina Simone thrown in for good measure.

I suppose if you wanted to you could hear all of those in the song and how she delivers it. The Icelandic pixie is the one that stands out to me but I also noticed little vocal tricks that I associate with Sol Heilo as well.

At the end of the day though, none of that matters. Bellefolie is setting down a marker with these early singles, and especially this one, which tells me we will be hearing much more of her/them in the future and that I already have my first entry for ‘Song of the Year 2025.’

I read that Bellefolie is noted for a unique presentation and stage presence and that extensive touring is amongst the main aims for 2025; and I hope that might include the UK somewhere along the line.

Find her/them on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61554815578790

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bellefoliemusic/

The post Bellefolie (Norway) – Your Gates (single) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

Meanwhile the song title ‘Modern Man’ has been graced by such musical luminaries as Howard Jones, Arcade Fire and numerous others and there is a band with that name, too.

I never expected anything with that title to be Death Metal, which is what I naturally expected from a band called Death Machine.

It turns out to be nothing of the sort, more of a soft prog piece lifted out of the 1970s and early 80s if anything with gentle vocals, a pleasantly melodic tune with rising intensity, multiple overlays of instrumentation and vocals that are underpinned by some of the crispest, most biting bass and drum rhythms I’ve heard in a while (well produced, too) and a nice line in syncopation between all of the instruments.

That ‘prog’ comment will probably be considered an unusual observation by their fans of what is fundamentally a folk band but that’s what I hear.

There’s a sort of extraterrestrial feel about it and it sounds like a space ship taking off at the end, hauling them all back to Planet Zog or wherever they originated from.

While Easton’s ‘Modern Girl’ was a celebration of the new found freedom to express themselves of late 70s/early 80s teenagers, Arcade Fire’s ‘Modern Man’ presented a dichotomy by zeroing in on the feelings of boredom amongst teenagers that arose in the same time period in Texas in the ever growing suburbs, while also sounding a warning about the impact technology was having on how people behave. Prescient or what?

With ‘Modern Man’, Death Machine take those concerns a stage further by relating how a modern man has to resort to many compromises in order to fit into society’s new norms and the structures that surround us.

I agree and I’ll make two observations.

• That is what I had to do when writing music reviews for seven years before I went solo and gave the finger to compromises;
• Writing this on 19^th January I suspect a lot of this is about to change. I think you know what I mean.

In the meantime, enjoy the song:

‘Modern Man’ will also feature on a double album, ‘Dawning Eyes, which will be released on 25^th April.

Death Machine is: Jesper Mogensen – vocals and guitar; Sven Busck Andersen – drums; Morten Vinther Ørberg – bass; Simon Christensen – keys.

Find them on:

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Deathmachinecph

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/deathmachine_cph/

The post Death Machine (Denmark) – Modern Man (single/track from forthcoming double album) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

It was a surprise to discover that Alex Rex has only once before appeared in this august journal, with the single ‘Wastwater’ in April 2022.

I’ve seen Alex Neilson play live on several occasions. A couple of times with the now sadly disbanded Trembling Bells (although I note that band’s keyboardist and lead vocalist Lavinia Blackwall, who has been ploughing a solo furrow, seems to have come back within his orbit) and a couple of times as Alex Rex, the most recent one being in Manchester, the weekend before Boris intoned “you must stay at home” and I remember spending half the gig trying to avoid getting close to his keyboardist on that night, who had clearly gone down with the lurgy.

I haven’t seen him since, what with being tied up with the Nordic scene, and that’s a shame because he and whatever his band is at the time always dispense oodles of energy and purpose and display great technical proficiency. And he can drum a bit, too.

(In the past I’ve seen direct comparisons made between Trembling Bells and Fairport Convention and between Lavinia and Sandy Denny but I hesitate to concur. They were better).

And that’s why I’m glad to see he’s still going strong, releasing a single, ‘Psychic Rome’, this week, on an obscure independent Scottish label, the Barne Society, which seems to fit the profile of a cottage industry microenterprise.

That seems to fit his character pretty well as a sort of DIY guy, collaborating with random musicians here and abroad on whatever project he or they are currently working on, the antithesis of the latter day pop star signed to a Universal brand for a six album deal on the strength of a single TikTok video recorded in their bedroom’s en suite toilet that got a few hits.

He’s Leeds born and raised, latterly settled in Glasgow but I always felt he’d fit in well with the UK’s most fascinating community, in Hebden Bridge, where everyone seems to be a self-help advocate.

Enough of the preamble already. What about the music?

Well, for ‘Psychic Rome’ he’s working with Lavinia again, on keys, also with Rory Haye (whom I’m sure has worked with Trembling Bells in the past?) and with Marco Rea on bass, a skilled songwriter in his own right.

You can always feel certain that Alex will come up with an erudite composition but never one that will go completely over everyone’s head. And even if it is in danger of doing that it won’t because you’ll be severely distracted by the way he and they smash it.

And so with ‘Psychic Rome’, which he introduces as “a glimpse into his interest in the corridor of time around the birth of Christ when the Roman Empire was at its most glorious and depraved. As Ted Hughes (a Poet Laureate and another native of Greater Hebden Bridge I might add) writes in his introduction to Ovid’s Metamorphosis, ‘For all its Augustan stability, it was a sea of hysteria and despair. At one extreme wallowing in the bottomless appetites and sufferings of the gladiatorial arena, and at the other searching higher and higher for a spiritual transcendence. ‘It also has a gnarly riff.”

Haye, Rea and Rex (sounds like a firm of solicitors) between them lay down a supremely powerful riff while Blackwall could be playing that piano to save her life on pain of being thrown to the lions if Caesar, Biggus Dickus and the rest are displeased.

I’m not sure that the lyrics collectively mean anything. I often think with Alex Rex that every line of lyric is an individual statement or invitation to examine a particular train of thought and they don’t have to have any reference to each other. Like Einstein trying to understand the origin of the universe from multiple starting points.

In this instance it’s as if he’d interviewed a variety of people from that era, taken some soundbites, put himself in it in a Beatles-like reference to his own death, and cobbled them all up into a BBC2 documentary, leaving you to figure it all out.

The video by the way comes courtesy of Tom Chick, with whom he has worked in the past, and is as surreal as the song.

As for Psychic Rome, now that Oldham’s last nightclub has closed down at least I’ll know where to go to party hard and skip the light fandango.

Ever since I first heard Trembling Bells (vaguely, through a distant radio playing a Marc Riley show on 6Music) I’ve always ranked Alex Nielson as one of the most creative musicians we’ve got. As I often say with Nordic musicians and bands I don’t get how he isn’t better known.

Find him on:

Bandcamp: https://alexrex.bandcamp.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexrexband

The post Weekend Intermission – Alex Rex (UK) – Psychic Rome (Single + video) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

It is possible that other countries might follow suit and ban it. Time will tell. With the “vibe shift” (as the kids put it) since (and leading up to) Trump’s election victory putting right wing attitudes to many issues into a more favourable space in many countries I do believe that liberal attitudes towards China are going to change rapidly.

I do not use TikTok, and I do not give out TikTok links for artists in the ‘Find them on’ section of each review.

I am suspicious about the platform but that is all I will say here.

My view on the ‘demise’ of TikTok as it concerns the music business, if that is what it turns out to be, is that it will actually be beneficial to artists in the long term, although they might not appreciate that in the short term.

In the last decade ‘success’ in this business appears to have become predicated on having one online hit, usually on TikTok, during which thousands, possibly millions, of people tuned in to a song ONCE. It doesn’t matter if not a single person bothered to listen to the follow up song. That single ‘hit’ means you are a ‘star.’

Of course it doesn’t. You will be forgotten just as quickly as any other one-off wunderkind in any other performance art business.

The BBC put out a couple of old programmes last night about ‘One-hit wonders’, in this case meaning artists and bands who had had only one single hit in the UK and flopped with everything else, irrespective of their success with albums, videos, or live performances. And they used the term ‘hit’ loosely – meaning getting in the Top 40 in the charts.

The list of big names was amazing, including:

Curtis Mayfield, Don Henley, Patti Smith, John Denver, Peter Sarstedt, Phyllis Nelson and The New Radicals.

John Denver – Annie’s Song – Top of the Pops December 27, 1974 – a one hit wonder in the UK

If that doesn’t demonstrate what a hard business it can be then nothing will. You are certainly not going to make a lasting name for yourself coming out of left field with one song posted on TikTok (or any other platform for that matter – this is just the most culpable one – by a country mile). Unless you are very, very lucky; the sort of person who wins the lottery one week; and then again the next.

But so many still seem to think that they will, just as the thousands of young female posters of themselves wiggling their almost bare butt on TikTok or Reels or whatever dream of becoming the next big name clothes model, or worse.

There are many factors involved in building a respectful following from scratch and aspiring young musicians need look no further than Taylor Swift. Swift didn’t have the ‘benefit’ of TikTok, she was a decade too early to be lured into its trap.

But she certainly did use social media in a more savvy way, by positioning herself as a ‘friend’ to the young girls who could relate to the ‘predicaments’ that she found herself in and subsequently suggesting to them that they are part of her success.

She has also evolved her style several times, thereby adding to her fan base.

You can’t do any of that in a handful of seconds on TikTok, which the majority of TikTok posts are (35 seconds on average for those with 500 followers or less, which encourages short concentration spans), and which perpetuate the notion of instant success in young, inexperienced minds.

I’ve got to know a lot of people in the music PR business over the last 10 years I’ve been writing about it and many of them are aghast at how little thought artists put into how to market themselves, failing to see the benefit of building up a relationship with a small number of people first, who over time become fans and then start recommending the artist to others in their acquaintance, who may know other artists who begin to recommend them, and so it goes on.

A good example of this comes from another level I suppose, namely that of the symphonic metal band, Nightwish.

Already a big band with a worldwide following, that support came though only from within its own fraternity, namely ‘metalheads’.

But since the advent of the online music ‘reactor’ (who does a similar job to what I do but usually only by giving their reaction to a live performance, on YouTube) Nightwish’s appreciation skyrocketed.

This was brought about by their fans, who wish to see them appreciated by others that are not conversant with them, messaging the reactors and asking them to record a reaction to a particular song.

It only needs a small number of people to do this to begin with to prompt a surge of views and those views come from people who may have no knowledge of the genre, let alone the band or the song.

In Nightwish’s case two things happened.

Firstly they became known to just about every reactor, which means that when a new live performance goes on YouTube (or sometimes a recorded one), they immediately ‘react’ to that one as well.

Secondly, the band has picked up support from all sorts of people – current or ex musicians (including a sudden rush of rappers), voice coaches, opera singers, classical musicians, music academics, roadies, even kids, you name it. And also older people; 60, 70, even 80 year old folk that have decades of experience of the music business and who move rapidly to endorse the band, often citing it as ‘the best I have ever heard and seen’ or similar.

The Taylor Swift effect in play, again. Make friends and use them to spread the word.

This video, I’ve posted it before in articles, has now been reacted to, via the process mentioned above, in my estimation by over a thousand of them, on each occasion pulling in from 10,000 to 50,000 views from people many of whom had never previously heard of the band and it has become, I believe, the most reacted to music video on YouTube (i.e. the number of reactors, not views).

Even this week I have seem five new reactions to it.

That is how to use social media. A relatively small number of people, who have become fans of the band, scouring the internet to find reactors, then urging them to review one song to start with, confident they will then do the same with others.

That is how to play social media but it should always be in conjunction with a PR professional, who has the ‘ins’ and clout that you will never have on your own.

And that applies equally to those that choose to do their own PR. Doing that has been facilitated by for example Linktree, which allows you to post links to your songs via several different platforms and which now offers a PR ‘template’ by which to promote the band.

About 25% of the submissions I receive are directly from the artist/band and that ratio is growing.

But be very careful how you do it. Some of the submissions are very good and have been well thought out by people that have a talent for it.

But most aren’t and some are so poor that they have ‘delete’ written all over them.

Stick with tradition.

And even then, they are better than sticking something on TikTok and waiting for that call that will never come.

In time historians will write about the disservice TikTok did to aspiring musicians. For now, even if you are addicted to it, dry those tears and move on. Find a new way. They are many and vastly preferable.

The post The music business and the demise of TikTok appeared first on Nordic Music Central.

Her songs are usually inspiring in a slightly off-the-wall way.

This is the second time in a few weeks that we’ve had a song called ‘Talk to me’, the previous one by Norway’s RABO, and again that title alone puts me in mind of the brilliance of Gabriel and Paula Cole’s live performance of ‘Come talk to me’ back in the 1990s.

In other words, anything with that title or similar has a lot to live up to.

And it usually relates to two people who were once close but for one reason or another no longer are. In Gabriel’s case it was a plea to his daughter to reconnect following his divorce from her mother.

In Carmie’s (Christine Aggerholm) case ‘Talk to me’ contrasts love and despair, the latter, caused by a loved one’s slump into depression and subsequent withdrawal from the world, failing to trump the love for that person, which persists and grows relative to the widening gulf between them.

Ultimately she tries to reconcile a quiet frustration with an unwavering commitment just to be there, even when it feels like there’s nothing left to do or which she can do.

And it helps that she herself has been through this, experiencing a feeling of powerlessness, but also one of profound care. A sort of no-man’s land between flowering tenderness and dwindling efficacy.

If you aren’t singing about a particular, specific incident that you’ve experienced – if you aren’t feeling it – it can be difficult to evoke the right emotions. But not for Carmie.

She succeeds by keeping it what I would call ‘authoritatively up-beat’, by which I mean she uses a tone of the sort that might be employed by a nurse in an old folks’ home; light, cheerful and reassuring.

“Just talk to me and you’ll be fine.”

While it is buoyant throughout, the intensity varies, just as any conversation between two human beings would in this situation while the music, which hangs on a simple but effective melody line, never gets in the way of the story.

There is an even more serious side to this as the song doubles up as an advisory on mental health generally.

You know I can’t help contrasting it with television adverts here in the UK by an organisation, SOS – Silence of Suicide which insists that we all need to ‘Stop the Silence’ and ‘Start the Conversation’, to head off suicide attempts before they happen. Several slightly odd looking people are shown laughing and joking at work but then glum and tortured when they are alone.

You can’t miss them, they’ve been shown for the last couple of years and they are on many channels.

They seem to be highly respected in that community but for me they are spoiled by a female voice that intones that mantra (above) as if she’s working for Big Brother in 1984.

For my money Silence of Suicide would do better to sign a deal with Carmie and let her dictate their artistic direction.

Taking the three songs we’ve featured together, Carmie is clearly a skilled writer already and one to watch out for this year when she will release an EP (her second) that will combine both new and previously released songs.

Find her on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carmiemusic

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carmiemusic/

The post Carmie (Denmark) – Talk to me (single/future EP track) appeared first on Nordic Music Central.