- 2023-01-23
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MUSIC
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Donate to support families affected by the crisis in Ukraine ➔ Siv Jakobsen Releases New Album “Gardening”: Streaming
Norwegian singer-songwriter Siv Jakobsen released her third studio album “Gardening” on January 20, 2023.
It is her first album in three years since the 2020 album “A Temporary Soothing”.
The album comprises 12-track, produced by Hans Olav Settem and Simen Mitlid, featurinf guest appearance from Norwegian-singer-songwriter Ane Brun.
Siv Jakobsen said of working with two producers, “I got in touch to see if they wanted to try and do some writing together, and I think we all realised it was a very good match. Then it just morphed into recording without me noticing. What started as recording one song became two and then it was 10. It was a really soft process.”
The album is inextricably linked to her own experiences and hard-learned lessons.
She recalls, “It was almost as if I had been in a time machine and suddenly I felt like I was in the past. I felt confused about what time it was, what year it was, and who I was. It was a confusing couple of days where I was met with my body's reaction to being back there. I felt so overwhelmed and quite frightened, like I had vertigo or something. So I decided, 'OK, I need to figure this out'. It made me realise that I had to dive a little bit deeper and try to understand it. And that prompted me to start writing about it.”- Siv Jakobsen said of the album, “This record is me doing an intense amount of emotional gardening. I was just raking through my mind and pulling stuff out, and then it grew back again, so I pulled it out again, whilst in real life I was tending to my modest but lovely garden in my home in Oslo."
She continued, “Gardening tackles a particular relationship from my past, and its effect on me in the past, present and future. When writing it I felt I was doing a continuous and elaborate form of emotional gardening, whilst in real life I was tending to my modest but lovely garden in my home in Oslo. I found great pleasure and comfort in the physical task of gardening, weeding and tending to my modest patio of flowers and edible plants, and their colours and metaphors seeped into my writing. It is a record I am immensely proud of, and one that I hope can make others who have been through similar things feel seen and less alone.” -
Siv Jakobsen explained of some tracks for the album.
She said, “My hope is that these songs can be helpful for anyone who has experienced a difficult and/or destructive relationship, whether romantic or not. I hope these songs are universal in some way - no matter the nature of the listeners past experiences.”
“Romain's Place”
“Right before the pandemic hit, I was on a small tour and found myself back in a city I used to call home. I hadn't been back since I left it (and the relationship I had there) behind a good few years ago. I felt quite shocked with how my body and mind reacted to being back, and realised quickly that I had some emotional unpacking to do. I was staying with my friend Romain at the time, and for me my time in his apartment encapsulates this realisation and the start of me dealing with these ghosts from my past that had laid dormant for a while. I was so overwhelmed at the time that it felt as if I was going crazy. I really did feel haunted, as if I had jumped into a time-machine and was somehow back in the past.”
“Most Of The Time”
“I knew that in going there it might awaken some difficult memories, but I was completely taken aback by how intensely I felt pulled back into who I was and how I felt all those years ago. I realised I had some unpacking to do, so that I could begin to properly come to terms with and understand those memories.
'Most of the Time' is about not being able to forget a particularly difficult relationship from my past. When left undealt with, the memories seemed to heighten in my sleep, in my subconscious, day and night, almost as if I was being haunted. It's about how our past affects our future, how it can affect our personalities morphing into someone slightly different. Being back in this place again after such a long time was a much greater shock to my system than I would have ever thought it could be, and it forced me to unbox a lot of things I thought I had safely stored away in the back corners of my mind. In the end, it's about reminding myself that I am feeling better now, most of the time.”
“Birthday”
“I imagine a vast pool of ended relationships where both parties sit at their own gloomy ends, greatly disliking or even hating the other. I wanted to write a song with this in mind, that there are often two deflated and angry hearts involved, both feeling the same anger, the same sadness.
The song is also a retrospective look at a hard time in my life - my 25th birthday -, with a strong realisation that I would never want to go back, no matter the circumstances. To me it encapsulates a mutual feeling of wasted effort and time toward something that was doomed to fail from the beginning.”
“Tangerine”
“I imagined someone who was held against their own will inside a run of the mill suburban house, looking out from the front room and willing for someone to come let them out. This someone is mentally stuck, a deer in headlights, scared and frozen. Not wanting to stay but unable to leave – worthless in another's world, like a carefully peeled, squashed and tossed tangerine.”
“Blue”
“This song just kind of happened. I wrote it and then I was like 'Okay, I wrote a very dark story about someone who's experiencing domestic abuse'. I felt like it fit in with the rest of the record, even though it's not about me.”
“Sun, Moon, Stars” featuring Ane Brun
“A big part of why I wanted her to sing on this song in particular is because a lot of the influence I have from Ane is in it. The style of the guitar, the strings, it just felt like it was a nice nod to how she's inspired me, so to have her sing on it felt like a full circle moment. From the 16 year old Siv singing Ane's “Rubber & Soul” in a high school recital, to waiting for Ane outside her gig in Boston as an aspiring songwriting student and mega fan of 22, to becoming colleagues and friends and singing together on Sun, Moon, Stars over a decade later.
Sun, Moon, Stars was written in November, a good few years ago. I remember humming the melody and working out the lyrics whilst out walking on a particularly dreary, dark and wet evening. Inspired by my least favourite month of the year and the heaviness I tend to feel during it, as well as the beauty and hope I've found in a companion that has the ability to pull me out of the dreariest corner of my mind, even during the darkest month of the year.”
“The Bay”
“It's at the top of a hill, there's a dense forest right behind it and even with all the windows closed you could hear all the birds. It was a very beautiful room and we made our studio there for a couple of days in the summer. Something about the way that room felt and sounded allowed us to record the two ('Small', 'The Bay') most vulnerable songs on the record. I think I maybe hadn't been ready to do them until then, anyway.”
Photo by Jørgen Nordby - source : Apple Music
