Susanne Sundfør - The crystal enchantment

Norway, a cold and pristine land where life is marked by endless pauses and harsh winters. Beyond these stereotypes, though, it's far more interesting to mention the talents that have emerged from its remote expanses: from dream-pop legends Bel Canto to electro-pop gurus Royksopp, down to niche cult acts such as Flunk, White Birch and Alog. It's not entirely clear what drives so many young Norwegians to pursue careers as musicians, but it's obvious that inspiration runs well above average over there.
Firmly belonging in this mix is also blonde Susanne Aartun Sundfør (born March 19, 1986). Blessed with a crystalline voice paired with a brilliant compositional talent that she pours into elegant digital architectures and airy orchestral arrangements, the Nordic muse behind Ten Love Songs has built a now well-established career, having placed three of her five albums at number 1 on the Norwegian charts, yet still without managing to break through outside her home country, despite the near-unanimous praise of international critics. And yet, her polished, many-sided skill as a sonic researcher comes paired with an instinctive, genuinely good pop sensibility, one that translates into catchy choruses and sweeping melodic openings. In short, everything that the far more celebrated Bjork has no longer been able to pull off for years now.

And you sing hallelujah
and you show me all the glory
(“Resign”)

Walls come tumbling down

Granddaughter of linguist Kjell Aartun, born and raised in Haugesund amid a setting of sea and nature, the Norwegian girl has a quiet childhood and adolescence. Between piano and singing lessons and her father's records (synth-pop legends a-ha and Cat Stevens), her sensibility takes shape through an unconscious process of both personal and artistic growth.
After attending a music-focused high school, she decides to try her hand at composing as a hobby. She soon discovers she's holding explosive potential in her hands. Right from the very first shot: the piano ballad "Walls" (2006), which sends her fresh young face to No. 3 on the Norwegian singles chart, with the backing of the far-sighted label Your Favourite Music. Anyone who only knows her from her latest, heavily electronic work will be stunned to encounter that early tangle of acoustic yearning in the style of Carole King. And yet, looking closely, the charm was already there in full view.
Paving the way for that breakthrough were a couple of live outings: an opening slot on English singer-songwriter Tom McRae's tour and a few performances alongside Madrugada, including a duet rendition of their "Lift Me". The success of "Walls" was the long-awaited answer to her hopes. And yet, for Susanne, several more years would have to pass before she could decide to make music her life's work.

Nor is it even her debut album that proves to be the decisive key. Even so, the charts at home confirm to be very receptive: released on March 19, 2007, Susanne Sundfør spends 23 weeks in the Norwegian Top 40 albums chart.
The longest shadow is still that of curly-haired Carole King, with her trademark autumnal melancholy delivered via piano, but the territories of Regina Spektor (especially in the vocal harmonies) and the more intimate Joni Mitchell aren't far off either. Acoustic folk-pop remains the defining trait of a Sundfør still far removed from the orchestral grandiosity that would come to mark the second part of her career. As if her talent were still too shy to let go and explode fully.
So there's no electronics here, and few string arrangements to accompany her piano-and-voice idylls, backed by a band and a bit of background backing vocals. Besides the return of the successful "Walls", it's mainly the new single "I Resign", placed at the top of the tracklist, that carries the album with its warm piano-and-voice blend built around a sinuous melodic line and lyrics playing on the theme of sin and redemption (“And you sing hallelujah/ and you show me all the glory/ You embrace our eternity/ then you tell me that I’m not a sinner”), bringing to mind the early Tori Amos, the one who waged epic religious battles clinging to her Bösendorfer.
The pull towards a more enveloping orchestral setup can already be glimpsed amid the string swells of "Dear John", where her voice finally gets to stretch out to its full range, in the propulsive folk-prog novelty of "The Dance", close to the naive romanticism of Kate Bush, and amid the daring vocal acrobatics of "Day Of The Titans", where a few timid electronic touches also peek through. But a more hushed tone dominates overall: elegant in the fairy-tale acoustic guitar arpeggios of "Gravity" and in the tormented piano runs of "Moments", almost classical in the austere composition of "Torn To Pieces" and in the brief farewell of "After You Left" (which contains a hidden track after several minutes of silence: the instrumental version of "The Dance").
The true high point of the record, though, is the duet with Odd Martin Skålnes on the aching "Morocco".

Susanne Sundfør passes almost unnoticed in the rest of Europe, but at home it cements the reputation of its then twenty-one-year-old author, who is also awarded a prestigious Spellemannprisen (the Norwegian Grammy) for Best Female Performance at the end of the year. More than for the award itself, though, Susanne makes headlines for her stage remarks, in which she raises doubts about the very validity of the distinction, pointing out that her work represents her first and foremost as an artist — and only secondarily as a woman — and arguing that keeping such categories around is by now outdated.
The young Norwegian, in short, has character. And she's not even afraid to come across as presumptuous when she states she doesn't want to be compared to towering names like Kate Bush and Bjork, with whom she will also work as a backing vocalist: "I pretty much never listen to them, so why should I measure myself against them?" she'll reply to yet another question on the topic.
With a Bob Dylan cover ("Masters Of War") and a curious collaboration at home (the track "Ingen Vinner Frem til Den Evige Ro", featured on the album "Sorgen og Gleden" credited to Princess Mette-Marit) now on her résumé, the singer-songwriter from Haugesund releases Take One, a live collection of songs from her debut (with the exception of "Morocco") in stripped-down versions, for piano and voice or acoustic guitar and voice. The title alludes to how the record was made, recorded in a single session.

Only after making "The Brothel" did I realize I would dedicate my whole life to music — it was the first time I felt I had truly found a sound.
(Susanne Sundfør)

Story of a prostitute

After two somewhat muffled, low-key efforts — the self-titled 2007 debut and the following live album — the birth of her third album The Brothel marks a crucial turning point in Susanne's career. Having decided to make music her life's work, she gets the chance to record the album with the support of a whole crew of professionals, a profound shift compared to the homemade approach of her two previous works. With Lars Horntveth (longtime member of Jaga Jazzist) brought on board for production and composition, the album blossoms from Sundfør's hands and mind with a chilling expressive intensity.

Comparable in this sense to the debut of Soap&Skin two years earlier, The Brothel is an explosive container of emotions, not a singer-songwriter album in the strict sense, but rather a collection of songs each quite different from the next, marked by a strong individual character. The voice takes center stage: an instrument capable of covering some of the most unusual shades, at times recalling the enchanted lyricism of her fellow countrywoman Anja Øyen Vister, singer of the aforementioned Flunk.
The music has by now decidedly shifted towards a transfigured version of the song format, mostly thanks to the use of electronics. Shifting style from the shadowy piano ballad template all the way to pounding electro-pop, the ten tracks — as many chapters of a concept album, a linear narrative based on the life of a prostitute — reach peaks of absolute passion. Where gentle keyboard notes are the only ornament to the vocal lines (the dream-pop splendor of the title track, as well as the closing "Father Father" and "O Master"), a rarefied atmosphere takes hold of the scene, blending skill and instinctive abandon with natural ease.
The alternation of tones keeps the record from ever losing the listener's attention, offering up metallic industrial-pop lashes ("Lilith"), electro orgies (the overpowering beat of "It's All Gone Tomorrow", the sickly airiness of warped melodies in "Lullaby" and "Turkish Delight"), and dark dirges of delicious ambiguity (the instrumental "As I Walked Out One Evening", the thundering timpani of "Knight Of Noir").
Electronics and orchestra, enchanted trills and dissonances, singer-songwriter structures and an apparent chaos of countermelodies intertwine in songs that are airy and never predictable. A fascinating and seductive Nordic muse, the Sundfør of The Brothel breaks every compositional cliché and puts together a surprising album, entirely foreign to schemes and categories. Casting restraint aside, pouring all of herself, soul included, into a third album that will be hard to forget.

In Norway it's a triumph: the album claims the No. 1 spot and becomes the second best-selling record of the year, with 40,000 copies sold. A national infatuation, in short, sealed by the enthusiastic words of critic Eirik Kydland of Dagbladet: "Plenty of young pop artists will cry listening to this record, it's that beautiful and artistically leagues away from them."
The die is cast. Susanne is no longer just a talented piano improviser, but a professional songwriter: "Only after making 'The Brothel' did I realize I would dedicate my whole life to music, because it was the first time I felt I had truly found a sound."

Buoyed by the overwhelming success achieved at home, Sundfør allows herself an experimental indulgence, releasing an entirely instrumental album, recorded with a team of keyboardists she personally selected, for the occasion of the twenty-fifth edition of the Oslo Jazz Festival. Among them was also jazz keyboardist Christian Wallumrød along with some members of Jaga Jazzist.
A Night At Salle Pleyel (2011) is essentially a single instrumental suite split into six movements and performed on Blofeld synthesizers. The title, it seems, refers to a tipsy night Susanne spent in Paris, at the Salle Pleyel concert hall. The style draws on contemporary art music, electroacoustic music in particular, but also features traces of nu jazz and ambient as well as nods to Bach.
Technically it's another live record — the suite was performed and recorded on August 28, 2011 at Sentrum Scene in Oslo — but audience reactions weren't captured, giving the sound a studio-like finish.
Also refined is the artwork by Norwegian designer Magnus Voll Mathiassen, which earned him the "Grafill Visuelt" award in 2012.

Plenty of young pop artists will cry listening to her songs, they're that beautiful and artistically leagues away from them.
(Eirik Kydland, "Dagbladet")

Beyond the veil

The start of the 2010s brings plenty of collaborations for Susanne, who tries her hand as a member of the band Hypertext in 2010, lends her voice to fellow Norwegians Real Ones for the single "Sister To All", and provides vocals to Nils Petter Molvær for his "Baboon Moon" (from the self-titled 2011 album). But what really boosts her profile beyond national borders is mainly the call from French act M83, who invite her to lend her voice to the gorgeous main theme of Joseph Kosinski's film "Oblivion", starring Tom Cruise.
Fresh off an intense 2011, which also sees her busy with an extensive tour, Sundfør returns just a year later with The Silicone Veil. Once again invaluable is the contribution of multi-instrumentalist Lars Horntveth of Jaga Jazzist, who supports her evolution towards increasingly complex sonic worlds. Compared to its predecessor, the jazz and acoustic elements shrink while the electronic component grows. Yet alongside the synthetic sounds, "classical" instruments — strings, harp, piano and brass — are added too, for a mix of sophisticated elegance.
If Brothel showed a faint soul with songs whispered amid a sea of silence, The Silicone Veil represents a liberating scream, an initiatory flight, a work that fully reveals all the potential of Susanne's early path. What hasn't changed is the main ingredient of her music: the voice. Among the most crystalline and multicolored voices on the indie scene, capable of dizzying flights and celestial virtuosity in the upper register, à-la Regina Spektor, the Norwegian artist makes the most of what nature gave her, tailoring songs that showcase her vocal cords. This isn't vocal display for its own sake, nor cloying vocal soliloquies, but rather proof of full compositional maturity.
Drawing on the solo works of dark muses of eras past (just think of Diamanda Galas), Susanne draws from various sources for a result that's hard to pin down. Although her voice isn't exactly that of a dark lady, the atmospheres are anything but comforting or sunny — indeed, on tracks like "Rome", "White Foxes" or "When", the contrast between the apparent melancholy of the melodies and the colorful explosiveness of the vocals creates real unease. The effectiveness of this choice — blending two emotional registers within the songs — allows the artist to swap between the classical compositions she holds dear, as in the splendid "Stop (Don't Push The Bottom)" or the instrumental "Meditation In An Emergency", and the use of electronics (the near-pop songs "Among Us" and "Rome") in a combination that, across just ten tracks, seduces without half measures. Having so many cards up her sleeve, in fact, the young artist can afford to range from the melodramatic, with a faint, cutting piano-and-voice ("Can You Feel The Thunder"), to the angelic, accompanied by little more than solo harp (the title track).
The end result is a delightful harmonic embroidery, icy and intricate at once, always ready to take the harder road and reject the most obvious melodic solution. Much like in the whirlwinds of Icelandic elf Bjork, the pop here frees itself from conventional structures to chase, seemingly, only emotional flow. The celestial peaks of "The Silicone Veil", poised between experimentation and classic piano ballads, conceal a wild, burning soul, like the untamed heart of the frozen lands she comes from. A delicate crescendo, a house of cards that, quickly forgetting the harp's notes, rises to brush against the sun, getting lost among the stratospheric heights of excellent synth-pop. Its success is also helped by the pleasantly disturbing music video, as is the case with the other single "Among Us", a psych-pop hallucination driven by a bass-synth axis and fringed with flashes of strings, with Susanne's voice obsessively overdubbed, narrating the deeds of a serial killer ("He peeled off every vein I had / 'Til there was nothing left").
Moments of pure light are the electronic empire of "White Foxes", built on the dialogue between piano lines and synth pulses, with a Dave Gahan-style hook ("You gave me my very first gun"), the seraphic insomnia of "Rome", barely rippled by synths and well-placed string touches, the troubled electro-pop of "Your Prelude", where frantic piano runs try to carve a path through walls of synth, and the opening "Diamonds", which starts a cappella and detonates into a whirlwind of electronics, percussion and vocal overdubs, before melting into the softness of the harp.
The lyrics, too, grow increasingly complex, starting with the title itself — a reference to the thin line separating people, but also life and death. Sundfør herself summed up the album's themes in four words: apocalypse, death, love and snow. The spectral romanticism of the lyrics never stops surprising, through a 44-minute tunnel of cosmic introspection, between claustrophobic nightmares and liberating fantasies. Like the one in "Can You Feel The Thunder", which stages the death of a matador (“I saw him fall/ to the white sand/ in Pamplona/ there was a matador… Kneel to the angels in high heels”).

Suspended between the flames of hell and the boundless expanses of paradise, The Silicone Veil generates an expressive power capable of upending emotional balance, cementing an artist of superior stature. Here too, commercial success in her homeland arrives swiftly: the record repeatedly hits No. 1 and spends 47 weeks in the Norwegian Top 40 albums chart.
Sundfør's triumphant 2012 closes out with a couple more high-profile collaborations — one with fellow Norwegians Röyksopp, to whom she lends her voice on the beautiful single "Running To The Sea" (of whom, in turn, she'll declare herself "a huge fan") — and one alongside Kleerup, with whom she co-writes the funky synth-pop track "Let Me In" — not to mention the prestigious spotlight of the Nobel Peace Prize concert. A year later, her entire catalog is reissued in Britain, earning positive critical response.

I've always written in a rush of inspiration. With 'Ten Love Songs', though, for the first time I had to rationalize the compositional process, as if I were putting together a puzzle or working through math equations.

(Not) silly love songs

Such great anticipation accompanies the release of Ten Love Songs (2015), the new chapter in her discography, announced under the banner of a strong pop appeal and thus with all the credentials to finally break into the global market, including a skillful use of electronics, which has by now become an integral component of the splendor of her sound. Without forgetting her roots as a (folk)pop songwriter, it's precisely along this line that Susanne chose to push forward, offering up a cascade of synths, to the point of brushing, in certain moments, even against the euro-pop of Lady Gaga (the ungainly pomp of "Kamikaze").
The goal, then, is to draw strength and impact from the heavy use of non-acoustic instruments, trying not to distort the celestial, graceful essence of her music, in part retracing ground already covered by artists like The Knife or Annie. Naturally, through it all, Susanne's extraordinary vocal abilities stand out, as she manages to blend interpretive registers the way only the very greatest can, adapting perfectly to the guise of a solemn electro-pop chanteuse.
This is also an album that required a change in her compositional process. As Susanne herself explained in an interview, while previously she would simply pour ideas onto the staff without restraint, this time, for the first time, she had to rationalize the process as if she were putting together a puzzle or solving math equations. Although at certain points there's an impression of a certain fraying, there's no shortage of elements trying to tie everything together, starting with an ever-present organ and some well-executed sonic tricks, such as making the intro and outro of each track connect (through similarity or contrast) with whatever surrounds it.
Taking the individual tracks, the formula seems to work brilliantly, starting with the most impactful pieces, like the first single "Fade Away", marked by a pounding rhythm and a keyboard solo, and the hyper-orchestrated dance of "Delirious", drowned in a whirlwind of dissonance (electronics, strings), overdubs and countermelodies, yet with a decidedly catchy chorus.
We move from skeletal yet moving ballads like "Darlings" and "Silencer" — held up by little more than a piano — to the pop assault of "Kamikaze", closed however with a harpsichord, as if unwilling to sever that debt to the classical, also honored by the organ solo amid the full electronic climax of "Accelerate" (with a few nods to Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor"), all the way to the ten symphonic minutes of "Memorial", whose opening section of organ, synth, acoustic guitar and strings paves the way for the tenderness of the chorus, before the orchestra explodes once again.
These emotional ups and downs give the album plenty of energy, but they don't deliver the sense of cohesion that her two previous records possessed, leading the listener on a pleasant, if at times somewhat uneven, rollercoaster of sounds. Moving on, we come across the fine electro-pop interlocking of "Insects" — a compelling robotic little march — passing through the sweetness of the organ on "Trust Me" and the dreamy solemnity of "Slowly", produced together with Röyksopp for an updated take on the best of Scandinavian-brand synth-pop.
Despite the variety of ideas and the richness of the ingredients, nothing feels out of place on Ten Love Songs; if anything, the album shines with a sonic brilliance, with melodic taste that's always sleek and never redundant. A record that can equally capture electronic music enthusiasts and mainstream pop regulars alike. A dozen or so universal songs, never trite or tasteless, in which even first-time listeners will easily glimpse the boundless potential of Sundfør's talent.

Just two years later, Norwegian singer-songwriter Susanne Sundfør, also buoyed by growing popularity outside her home country, returns with Music For People in Trouble, and from the very first notes it feels like a rediscovery of her origins. While its predecessor surprised everyone with a decisive synth-pop turn, her current focus has shifted toward essentiality and minimalism.
The key to reading this album, regardless of each song's central instrument — be it a bare guitar pattern ("Reincarnation") or a piano played with the lightest of touches (the beautiful, intense "Good Luck Bad Luck") — lies in the tension arising from the contrast between the solemn and the skeletal. A track like "The Sound Of War" already sets these ideas to music: while the instrumental backdrop is as bare-bones as it gets, on the other hand we have a voice, clear, limpid and graceful, that in certain moments carries something powerful and imposing within it, lending the song an inexplicably stentorian quality, helped along by a coda with a dark-ambient flavor.
Despite the lovely feeling given off by these atmospheres, the album — visibly an ambitious work — comes across as incomplete and underdeveloped, almost stillborn, not helped by a runtime that feels too rushed. And so it's on the individual tracks that the overall quality rises considerably: alongside the songs already mentioned, which tower over the rest, the fantastic "Undercover" naturally dominates, while tracks like "Bedtime Story" and "No One Believes In Love Anymore" trail slightly behind in terms of impact and beauty.
As already noted for its predecessor, Sundfør seems to have lost an underlying coherence that could allow her to put out an album capable of truly splitting the market wide open; indeed, if here too the individual tracks largely carry the record, the whole feels frayed, lacking a sonic theme to define it. That said, we can't ignore the beauty of the vocal-pop of "The Golden Age", all synth flourishes and vocalizing, or the momentary close of "Mountaineers" featuring John Grant. We're thus faced with a work that partly recovers the origins of the musician born in Haugesund, leaning heavily into a blend of whispered vocal-pop and certain folk textures explored on her first two albums, almost inexplicably setting aside the widely-loved synths of tracks like "Delirious".

New (and radical) musical experiments

After releasing a live album in 2019 retracing the feats of her previous record, in 2023 Susanne returns with a new work titled blómi, an ancient Norwegian term that literally means to bloom. In the six years separating her from her last studio album, the talented Norwegian artist experienced the great joy of becoming a mother, an event that deeply moved and involved her, so much so that it sparked a desire to examine, even on a historical level, that condition, one that finds some particular facets precisely within the tradition of her homeland.
The stylistic approach essentially follows the blueprint already enjoyed on the previous Music For People In Trouble, offering a few small variations on the theme that are a pleasure to take in.
Her crystalline voice, exemplary in every respect, measured and rigorous in the lower registers, limpid and commanding in the higher ones, flutters through the ten tracks on the record like a lively butterfly, amid pure sounds built mainly around piano and classical guitar.
In this regard, the title track is the prime example of the refinement that marks every cell of the LP; piano notes and saxophone flourishes fill the air over lyrics the artist dedicates to her daughter, almost like a letter of instructions a mother gives her child, warning of the obstacles of the present, yet reassuring about what the future will bring.
The matrilineal system is a foundation underpinning the entire body of writing announced by Sundfør, a process of social anthropology that has always been deeply rooted in traditional Norwegian culture.
Tracks like "rūnā", with intense, powerful choral parts used to reinforce reflections on rebirth after phases of devastating pain, the soul-jazz of "fare thee well", the sweet mysticism of "alyosha", whose video draws on scenes from her own wedding, and the dreamlike textures of "nāttsǫngr", all melt away with boundless sweetness and purity, as Susanne's aforementioned voice takes the reins of the situation with unmatched mastery.

The titles of the tracks on the record are all phrased in an ancient Norwegian language, but there's no need to worry, because the lyrics are written in the far more accessible English language, with the exception of "sānnu yārru lī", recited in German on themes that evoke the most sincere feelings, tying them to certain dynamics that characterize the cultivation of the land. It's a significant track, one that diverges diametrically from almost all the others, thanks to a particular use of percussion and accompanying electronic inserts, with flutes that progressively break up the flow, offering a captivating, visionary ford along the path. But it's not the only one.
The two tracks that open and close the record, "orð vǫlu" and "orð hjartans", also, as mentioned earlier, both performed by Eline Vistven — a musician and, notably, a renowned therapist — mark a clear dividing line with the rest of the track list, with dark electronic textures underneath that, especially in the closing track, amid drones and sinister electronic weavings, pull sharply away from everything else on show. If we want to include it, "Ashera's Song" too, which picks back up the ancestral maternal themes mentioned earlier, retains within its deceptive sonorities that same shadowy aura, where Susanne's sumptuous voice does nothing but sharpen the sense of seductive, lingering unease.

Three years later, in an era of frantic chasing after algorithm-smashing features, Susanne Sundfør found fertile ground for her songwriting by entering into dialogue with Julian of Norwich, an anchoress who, from the last decade of the fourteenth century until her death sometime after 1416, lived secluded in a cell adjacent to St. Julian's Church (the woman's real name remains unknown to this day). It's perhaps a collaboration no one could have predicted (and certainly not one engineered to please the most fervent Christian audience). And yet it's not such an inexplicable move either, for anyone following the original artistic path of the Norwegian musician, who has always been inclined toward experimentation and who, for almost ten years now, has abandoned the road that, with the gorgeous Ten Love Songs, seemed poised to carry her toward a much wider international audience.
Co-author of the lyrics is thus a mystic who lived straddling the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and who witnessed firsthand the plague, war and the peasants' revolt in England of that era. Having survived an illness that brought her close to death, she experienced during her agony divine visions — or revelations — to the commentary of which she then devoted much of her life of prayer and seclusion. Revelations Of Divine Love (2026) is in fact the title of the work she wrote in Middle English, also the oldest known surviving text written in English by a woman.
For this modern reinterpretation, the thirteen compositions were recorded live in a Norwegian church, where Sundfør's voice is accompanied solely by the pipe organ played by British musician Kit Downes (co-author of the arrangements). Despite a few brief instrumental tracks serving as interludes, the beating heart of Revelations is without doubt Sundfør's vocal performance, impeccable as ever. And this is not a pure exercise in style or virtuosic display: the singing envelops and caresses the listener, acting as a bridge between the present day and the medieval mysticism of Julian of Norwich. The choices made during recording are also extremely effective in conveying a sense of intimate closeness and contemplation, so that one always has the impression of sitting in a church, on a pew immersed in half-light, while the sound of organ and voice reverberates through the neo-Gothic naves. The sonic flow, moreover, is highly evocative, finding moments of sublime transcendence in the second half of the record with "The Blessed Wounds" and the truly goosebump-inducing crescendo of "All Shall Be Well".

Of course, the lyrics don't resonate powerfully, or even come across as alienating, if one isn't of Christian faith or approaches them today as a non-believer. So why, then, this strange "collaboration" with Julian of Norwich in particular? Sundfør recently stated, in an interview with Clash, that she became interested in the anchoress from a feminist perspective. Now, simply being the first woman to have written a text in the English language, or having embraced a radical way of life, isn't enough on its own to automatically make someone a feminist. But the Norwegian musician knows this perfectly well too, and perhaps it's precisely the paratextual elements she has added that help us in interpreting the message of divine, unconditional love that Julian of Norwich meditated on at such length.
Both the photograph chosen for the cover and the accompanying artistic video reference the act of giving birth and the sphere of motherhood. Conception, labor and birth in the flesh are themes symbolically interwoven into Christian theology, but here they are instead represented as an act of love not necessarily anchored to a religious message (although, let's be honest, the video wouldn't have suffered from the presence of at least one queer couple, given that, at least within Catholic circles, we are still quite far from full acceptance of a non-heteronormative family and parenting model). In a broader sense, such an act of love might perhaps also be read as an act of care and solidarity; and it is precisely the concept of care that lies at the center of numerous feminist practices and politics. But perhaps it is also a love that presupposes an awareness of difference, and of the need to be able to accept perspectives on life opposite to our own, such as, for instance, that of our anchoress. Seen in this light, in the end, Revelations Of Divine Love doesn't seem so far removed from Music For People In Trouble, and continues to embody its intense embrace of hope.

While awaiting the next chapters of her musical novel, Susanne Sundfør can rightfully aspire to a place among the greats of international pop songwriting. Given the quality of her music and her thrilling live performances across Northern Europe, as well as the impressive volume of positive reviews garnered outside her home country (Italy included), it seems only a matter of time before the unnatural insularity that has so far befallen her output comes to an end.

Contributions by Rossella De Falco, Cristiano Orlando ("blómi") and Daniel Moor ("Revelations Of Divine Love")

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