Norwegian singer/songwriter releases a second record that you just won’t be able to pin down
If you judged, “No Offending Borders”, the second album by Norwegian singer/songwriter Torgeir Waldemar based solely on its first track “Falling Rain”, you might just have the Counting Crows line, “I wanna be Bob Dylan” in your head. But just like you couldn’t ever second guess Mr Zimmerman (and indeed the next line of “Mr. Jones” is “Mr Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky”) then whatever thoughts you might have about Waldemar are merrily deconstructed over the course of the next 40 minutes.
In truth, Torgeir Waldemar has been doing that for years anyway. Not just musically either. Living proof that whilst you can sometimes judge a book by it’s cover, you can’t here. He might look like he should be in some Black Metal band, but he’s very much…. well, that’s trickier.
From the first song, you’d think he was a folkie (and it’s a cover of Link Wray) from the second “Summer In Toulouse” you might hazard a guess that this was Steve Earle jamming with The Byrds, while the third “Among The Low” does some traditional roots but adds a screeching guitar line just for wilful kicks.
A record – lyrically at least – reflects the downbeat and ultimately chaotic times we live in, but does so in a thoroughly original way. “Island Bliss”, acoustic led and gorgeous, has echoes of Billy Bragg’s later work, but deals with loss particularly sensitively.
The dark Americana blues mash up of “Sylvia” (originally by Southern People) is a highlight, not least because it manages to extract both some Thin Lizzy-esque guitar and some West Coast laid back bliss from the 1970s, but then as if to prove that you’ll never know what he’s going to do next, there’s a wonderful primal quality to the folk of “Bottom Of The Well”.
A collection that takes it’s time to meander into whatever corner it chooses, there’s a poetic and stark side to the desolate “Souls On A String”, which contrasts superbly with the warm country of “I See The End” with its harmony vocals, it is almost tempting to imagine that it was written around a campfire with only the vast openness for company.
The whole is “No Offending Borders” feels like that. No barriers, no constraints and no bowing to expectations. It might be a bleak (mostly) album, but my it’s a good one. What it lacks in laughs, it makes up for in skill. Wherever you are when you hear this, you will be drawn into its beguiling spell.
Rating 9/10
