Week 25 of an album a week for a year
Birna by Wardruna
Hey everyone! Couple of weeks between posts so apologies. In brief: I flew to Thailand and caught up with by brother and dad in Koh Tao, then spent another 4 days or so in Indonesia. I then had a 40th birthday in Melbourne and attended that, before flying back across the country yesterday to Perth.
Despite being absent textually, sonically I have continued listening to an album each week. It's just taken until now to get a chance to sit down and write the review.
I'll start with week 25. This week I listened to Birna by Wardruna.
This album is fantastic but very different from my usual*. As a genre I'd call it dark viking folk, and it's got an incredibly epic feel to it. None of the lyrics are in English. Most of the instruments are unfamiliar to me. When I think folk music, I do not think of music like this. This music is tribal, there's clapping and interesting rhythms. I'd really recommend giving this one a shot.
I believe these people have made a lot of the music for the Vikings TV show. I watched a couple of seasons years ago but I'm not familiar with much of the newer seasons. As this album came out this year, I'm guessing you won't know this music, but if you like the music from Vikings, you have a rough idea of what this will sound like.
I'll go through the songs.
Hertan starts off with a heartbeat. It's a great start to an album and the intensity just builds from there. I have no idea what the chants are saying, but it sounds full on, hearing people breathing and things building up into a real climax when they start singing.
Birna comes in next, and it's far more gentle to start with. Well the first minute or so is, and then the horns start, and you can practically feel the raiding parties getting ready. It just keeps stamping along, it's got a real anthem feel to it this song.
Ljos til Jord starts off gently with the sound of running water, and some women chanting and clapping. Then when the bloke starts singing, it goes up a notch, with some kind of a flute thing in the background. When the strings kick in they bring on a feeling of mild anxiety, and it keeps pushing towards something.
Dvaledraumer is the longest song on the album, clocking in at over 15 minutes. Having listened to this album on a variety of different sound sources, you really need to have something with decent bass to hear the layers of build up. It's a slow start. Around 2:30 something that sounds a bit like a kazoo kicks in, and it's alright, but the tone, to my ears, is a bit meh. Around 3:15, something synthy and really low cuts through, and that sounds great. When the vocals kick in around 4 minutes in, there's a lot of space in the song. There's a drum but it's sparse, giving everything a chance to breath. Around 5 minutes in and there's some kind of a stringed instrument playing, and it starts holding everything together, like a tapestry made of plucked arpeggios. The vocals then sit within that, and it continues like this until around 13 minutes. Then it's just a woman singing and what sounds like birds and a wind instrument takes over.
Jord til Ljos a woman and some birds start this one off, continuing from the last song, and that fades out to be left with a stringed melody. Things pick up around a minute and a half in. This song tickles the back of my mind, but buggered if I can remember what it's from. It's a little bit like 5:25 minutes into Aerials by System Of A Down. It's like that, but different. Anyway, I like the sound of it, there's an ascending and descending melody to the vocals that I quite enjoy, and it fades out to the sound of birds. Lot of nature in this album in case you haven't already gathered, and I find it really refreshing.
Himinndotter is possibly my favourite song on the album. I don't know the words but right from the first time I heard it, it made me want to sing along. Sure, I don't know what the lyrics are, but it makes me want to sing. It has this creepy kind of turn to it about a minute and a half in that sounds great to me, and then it kicks into a tribal section I love. When the main melody comes back in though, it's like listening to the sun rise! Very magical song, I don't need to know what the lyrics are to know that it's intense. It leaves me feeling uplifted and energised.
Hibjornen is a song I'm torn about. On the one hand, it's a gentle, beautiful song. On the other, it sucks the mood out of the room. I think this song should have been cut from the album. It's not a bad song, but it doesn't fit the tone of the rest. Every other song on this album has an interesting rhythm and an intensity to the song. But this song? It's some kind of stringed instrument playing soft arpeggios and someone singing a ballad over the top, in a language I don't understand.
Skuggehesten has a darkness to it. There's an evil feel in this sound, from the thunderstorm and hoof beats at the start to the grating tone of the spoken word at the start. This sounds like an anthem for pillaging, a drunken song to sing after the killing has been done. Quite like it.
Tretale has a slower, ambient start, but again the drums are what start kicking it up a notch. That driving beat, with vocals sounding like the main menu of Halo 1, it just really grabs me. What this song really reminds me of though? At 3:24 this song sounds like Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by Eurythmics. Sure, it's slowed down and sung slightly differently, but that's what I hear. And once you hear it, it's hard to unhear it to be honest. Despite this, I still like this song, and that section only goes for about 30 seconds.
Lyfjaberg closes the album with a slow fade in to a truly epic anthem. This is another song that I wanted to sing along to when I heard it. I don't even know the words but I feel almost compelled to sing along to this one. It's really catchy, and now that I'm listening to it I'm not sure if perhaps this is my favourite song. It's a close call between this and Himinndotter. Truth is, it solidifies my thoughts about cutting Hibjornen. The album would have been stronger without it.
So that's Birna. All in all I really loved almost everything on this album, but that song Hibjornen, it sucks out too much energy from this album. In fact, it comes in and cuts off the tip of the little finger at the second knuckle, making this album 4 and a half fingers.
The year so far
Week 19 - Chrystabell and David Lynch
*I have no idea how I found Wardruna to start with, but it was in my Spotify album lists. I started saving albums to that list back in shit, 2015 or so. So there was roughly 10 years worth of saved albums. I recently thought fuck Spotify, let's support Tidal. So I went over, and then had to copy across all the albums. Somewhere along the line I went right, if I add a band and they have a new album out this year, I'll save that album too. So I saved the Wardruna album Skald at the start of June, along with Birna. I don’t know why I picked it, it just felt like the right thing to do.