It was in May of last year that Marte Eberson released her first solo single for six years, ‘This will blow’, which is also the first track on what will be her new album, ‘Free’, in October.
Over a year on and we reach the ultimate single before the album drops, and this one is a gentle breeze before it starts blowing a hurricane.
Mick Jagger might have found it difficult to “get no satisfaction” but for Marte it comes easy and she wants more. Like Depeche Mode she just ‘Can’t get enough’.
Bedroom pop, they say. Quite.
This is unashamedly one for the final course of the smoochy dinner, when the lights are turned down lower still, the second bottle of wine has been polished off, the last cigarette extinguished, ABC’s ‘The Lexicon of Love’ has just played out on the stereo, and thoughts turn to…well, whatever they turn to.
This is a family blog so I’ll leave it at that…for now. Put the kids to bed straight away before you read further.
In a previous single from the forthcoming album a couple of months ago Marte went to great lengths to explain her ‘love and let live’ nature and how it prompts her to take risks in her relationships on the basis that she can always just walk away and start again if the going gets tough. Nice work when you can get it. I should be so lucky…lucky, lucky, lucky.
But she must have paid a visit to a relationship counselor in the interim because it is evident from ‘Can’t get enough’ that she’s found Mr Right this time. She simply can’t get enough of him.
But then, “waking up too early and seeing you next to me/I don’t even know you but I know how you’re making me feel”.
“I do not remember all the words that I said/I guess I had too many and now you’re here in my bed…”
That sort of suggests something more casual; ships that pass in that night? Contradictions abound in Marte’s songs.
So, I assume that we’re right at the start of a relationship but all the right buttons have been pressed already. But then there’s a passing mention of a break-up and we’re back to Square 1. Oh dear.
Vocally, the ultra sultry delivery and the little oh, oh, ohs tell their own story.
Musically it’s an unusual product of jazz and R&B, very laid back, with a 1940s feel to it, by way of a recording technique which seems to switch the organ, piano, drums and what has become a regular grinding bass line (no pun intended) back and forth between the studio and another one across the corridor where the door is closed, and a hissing noise like it’s a HMV vinyl being played at 33rpm instead of 45.
Producer Jonas Kroon is well known as a master of these little tricks but he’s excelled himself here.
It settles into what you might expect to hear in a select jazz lounge on the wrong side of Sunset Boulevard then out of the blue lurches an instrumental bridge comprising flamenco guitar, wild synths, voiceovers, you name it, which sounds like a wild thrash under the sheets, no holds barred. It verges on the orgasmic. There hasn’t been so much action dans la chambre since Serge aimed Jane, moi non plus.
I must add that the bridge is particularly impressive. The more I listen the more I hear what Fiona Apple, Charley Drayton and Jon Brion were doing on Apple’s ‘Extraordinary Machine’ and that was Grammy-nominated.
Marte Eberson is unusual in that she can write these sofa slow burners and throw in instrumentals to die for.
Even though we have covered most of the singles we will still run the rule over the album as a whole because it has a ‘concept’ feel to it and I’m keen to hear how they work together.
It would be corny to say we can’t get enough of Marte Eberson, wouldn’t it?
So what, I’ll say it anyway.
‘Can´t get enough’ is out on September 8th on the Grappa label. The album will follow in October and includes a vinyl version.
Marte and her band play a gig at Parkteatret, Oslo on November 8th.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marteebersonmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marteeberson/
Photo: Ole Martin Halvorsen
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