Grand White Silk

Torun Eriksen presents Grand White Silk. Few songwriters can perform their material with such unobtrusive self-awareness as Torun Eriksen: she possesses many strengths as a lyricist, as a composer, as a singer. On Grand White Silk, she has pulled off the rare feat of playing to all of these enviable strengths with equal vitality and conviction. When you have set standards as high as Torun already has, all that remains to be done is aim higher: her aim has proven true, with a set of songs and performances that crown her work to date. Lyrically, the album draws on the place of the everyday amid the universal - those "little things we begin not to notice, that are important to us, yet we are blind to them through familiarity." Love; shame; self-acceptance; connections physical, emotional and electronic; contradictory feelings common to the modern world; the ability to simply breathe and accept a passing moment for what it is without question; the brief and frail existence of any individual within a universe without a visible, tangible beginning or end; all of this informs Grand White Silk, and it is delivered with images rich, poignant, sometimes seeming quotidian, at other times fragile and ethereal. Whether amid a lush arrangement with vast dynamic sweep, or against a sparse solo piano accompaniment, or against a juggernaut beat that seems close to unstoppable, Torun's sensitivity to her lyrical content is revealed time and time again by measured performances that are emotionally charged without melodrama, philosophical without cold intellectualism, meditative without haziness. Her distinctive tone, perfect phrasing and sensual delivery has few peers. Grand White Silk sets a new high-water mark for an already impressive career. Features: David Wallumrod on keys, André Berg on guitar, Kjetil Dalland on bass and Andreas Bye on drums.