Ane Brun: Change of the Seasons

By: Dennis Cook

With a long chain of broken hearts and the warbling songbird flutter of young Dolly Parton, Norway’s Ane Brun is a just below the radar roots music jewel. Looking like a proper coal miner’s daughter on the cover in her plaid shirt and simple black skirt, she’s also lightly haunted, ready to bury her ex-lovers and their ghosts (which may explain the spectral shadow slumped over depressingly behind her in the cover shot). By the time “The Fall,” only the second track, begins to peel away her soul piece-by-piece you’ll be wondering, “Why in the hell haven’t I heard of this lovely, lonely gal before?” Just call it America’s musical protectionism, where even stunning artists have a hard time busting into our consciousness if they aren’t from the States (or perhaps “America Jr.” to the North). And despite the intrinsic twang of her pipes this ain’t all folksy mope. “The Puzzle” suggests a far less mannered Bjork with Brun gliding over gray strings and a voluptuous, upward swell, while “Ten Seconds” dances in Dusty Springfield turf, But, it’s likely the title cut that’ll get stuck in your craw, one of those patiently growing bits of intimacy that endears an artist, music to stuff in a locket and ponder when the hours slow and dusk sends us our thoughts winging. That it isn’t the only track to vibrate on that level marks Ane Brun as a singer-songwriter worthy of deeper inspection.

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