I've been a fan of Danish singer and songwriter Amalie Bruun since her Ex Cops days. Her Sarah Records inspired project with Brian Harding was a far cry from the black metal folk hybrid she cultivated through Myrkur, my admiration for her having been eternally attained upon the release of her darkly triumphant second album, Mareridt. As adventurous as my listening habits can be at times, I was not thrilled when I heard that her third LP would drop the pretenses of black metal traditionalism altogether, and would instead be leaning into the pure folk elements of her sound. It felt like a move that capitulated to the complaints leveled at her previous efforts, in that she was jettisoning the more controversial aspects of her music for safer, more formal fair. As a result, I almost slept on Folksange. By Odin, would that have been a mistake.
Folksange is a collection of twelve Scandinavian folk songs, sung an arranged by Bruun with the help of he-witch Christopher Juul of Heilung fame. To manifest the authentic connection with her ancestral roots, which she believes these songs afford, she has employed a host of traditional instruments, including the frame-drum, nyckelharpa, lyre, and mandola. Further, Bruun insists that she is not updating or "modernizing" the songs that she sings on Folksange, but rather taking ownership of them, and making them her own. Bruun is a devotee of Jungian psychoanalysis, and it is hard not to feel as if she is tapping into some archetypal forms when she is singing these songs. For most artists, an album of covers would be filler between studio releases, but Folksange is confident and committed to its task of manifesting these traditional tales of love, loss, and deus ex machina, as real and relevant in a digital world that has been conquered by a self-satisfied cult of reason. Even though I don't speak the same language as the one these tales are spun in, I can still feel their power influencing me, conjuring emotions that may not have been felt to their fullest extend this century, or any century since humankind wrested control of the earth away from the gods.
Opener "Ella" has a lush, cascading top-line melody that rushes at you like a river, sweeping you off your feet and over the edge of a waterfall, only to keep you suspended in the air until you land comfortably on "Fager som en Ros," a playful song of devotion with a subtly mischievous aura, possibly an illusion the finality suggested by its romantic gestures. "Tor i Helheim" is clean and resonate with Bruun singing along with a pared-back piano and guitar accompaniments depicting a literal trip to hell to find a lost lover. Later, the somber "Gammelkring" shuffles its way through a cold stone passage, wincing at the bitter light as it splits through the cracks in the crumbling structure. It is one of the more haunting tracks on the album, and contrasts interestingly with "Gudernes Vilje," a more uplifting track with a melody that slowly evolves, beginning on the mossy ground only to levitate off this terrestrial plane on a slow, sure-footed climb skyward, revealing additional layers to the composition as it blooms in a brilliant but weary transcendental procession. Closer "Vinter" takes us the farthest from Bruun's starting point with Myrkur, introducing a delicately innocent and cinematic sounding piano-driven waltz that feels like a heavy curtain falling from a pane-glass window to reveal an idyllic countryside, complete with bustling herds of sheep, bumbling their way down a dirt road, past clean cobble-stone walls. There is a hint of hesitation to the song, a bit of uncertainty, but it is overwhelmed by the hope it exudes. I am never one to shy away from the darker places music can take us, but in shrugging off the weight and turmoil of Myrkur's black metal past in favor of something more ancient, she may have found something just as eternally peculiar and evocative than the bloodthirsty howls of Bathory and Dark Thrown that she once mightily evoked. Time will tell how much farther she is willing to turn back the hands of time to find even more redolent sounds to excavate. Whatever the future holds for Myrkur, though, I will likely continue to sing a hymn and refrain to her glory.
Grab it from Relapse records, here.
