IDA MARIA - Fortress Round My Heart

Before you can even register it, over an insistent guitar riff, Ida Maria (full name Ida Maria Børli Sivertsen) begins to declaim: "Find a cure / find a cure for my life…/ Find a cure / find a cure for my life…".

That's how “Fortress Round My Heart” opens, the debut album from this sweet-natured hellraiser born in Nesna, Norway, but later settled in Stockholm, Sweden. Jet-black hair, piercing eyes, and a voice equally capable of mastering a raw, feverish rasp and a smooth, sensual croon.

Punk energy and an all-female passion make “Oh My God” (a lean three-and-a-bit minutes) the epitome of the perfect single. There's even a duet version with Iggy Pop: seek it out! The essence of the album, closed by the tender elegy of “See Me Through”, lies in its admirable balance between visceral impact, catchy urges and a tender, womb-deep disenchantment.

So, right away, the subtly uneasy soul of “Drive Away My Heart” dissolves into a chorus as airy as it is majestic, the fizzy, carefree “Louie” has us walking on air, and the nervy guitar interplay (Stiff Little Fingers?) of “I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked” points the way to a refrain carried by pure pop effervescence. In short, there's always a thin line between fragility and visceral drive running through her songs (“Stella”), with moments of pure, caressing abandon (“Keep Me Warm”).

But these are moments where that melancholy warmth takes on the job of making that irresistible tension even more apparent, a tension that elsewhere finds further lifeblood in “Forgive Me” (which points to flight as the ultimate remedy for unhappiness), “Morning Light” (impossible not to crack a smile at) or, again, in the pounding, jubilant “Queen of the World”.

Well done Ida, well done!

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28/09/2010