We have platformed Lea Kampmann several times, noting her propensity to create simple, undemanding ballads.
This time out I don’t have access to the lyrics for ‘Vestmanna í kava’ (‘Vestmanna in Snow’); so I’ll concentrate on the music. It was created in collaboration with Teitur (Lassen), the Faroese musician and composer, with whom she has previously worked.
What I can tell you is that the song pays tribute to Lea’s childhood village of Vestmanna in the Faroe Islands, and the experiences she had there with her grandmother, by sharing those moments now.
I checked out Vestmanna, courtesy of Mr Google (other maps are available) expecting it to be super isolated like Vestmannaeyjar in Iceland, but it’s a pleasant looking little village of a few hundred souls on the same island as Tórshavn, the capital, and just across the sound from the airport, where you can watch a plane take off or land every few days or so.
Now you’ve had your geography lesson, back to business.
I imagine the community spirit they have in places like that is fantastic, the opposite of what it is in the UK, wherein next door neighbours in cities like London and Manchester don’t even know each other, if they cared to in the first place.
And that is what comes across better than anything else in this song, a sense of belonging to something that is worth cherishing.
The song paints a picture of those waves dancing across the sound below her childhood home, snow covered streets and the relationship she had with granny.
Musically there are several clever little production tricks used to create atmosphere, including what sounds like a mix of synthesiser and strings to fabricate a (sudden and quite loud) ethereal sound and various voices off which could be a party or a children’s playground, or both.
It reminds me, if I might digress, of the John Lewis TV Christmas advert in the UK in 2021 called ‘Unexpected Guest’ which had the chance meeting of a female alien from a crashed spaceship and a young boy who tries to hide her location while she repairs it, a la ‘ET’. The effect, by way of a similar sort of sound manipulation, was quite similar to what has been achieved here.
Who knows, John Lewis might even hire Lea for this year’s advert, always the most anticipated one; now that would be reaching the pinnacle.
Two observations I’d make. Even though Christmas is still five months off, the nights are already starting to draw in and I didn’t react as adversely to a winter themed song as I thought I would. It’s coming anyway, like it or not.
Secondly, she has the knack of making you feel as if your are part of the mosaic that she creates; that rather than shuffling around your run down council estate, you are actually part of the vibrant scene on a remote windswept archipelago where, as in the ‘Cheers’ theme tune, everyone knows your name, including the sheep, who outnumber the humans.
‘Faroes’ means Sheep Islands, did you know? We truly are the Font of Knowledge!
You could argue that it gets a little schmaltzy at times but then again any song of this type will do that. And in the schmaltz pecking order it comes nowhere near Clive Dunn’s ‘Grandad’, the surprise Christmas hit of 1970 which spent 27 weeks in the chart.
Could Lea replicate that? Why not?
This latest single is the final preview of her forthcoming album ‘Seinferð’ (‘Slow motion’), which will be released on September 13th, “to celebrate life, love and the unique landscape that has shaped Lea as an artist and individual.”
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leakampmannmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leakampmann/
