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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Broken Twin (No 1,732) | Broken Twin (No 1,732) |
| (6 months later) | |
| Hometown: Copenhagen, Denmark. | Hometown: Copenhagen, Denmark. |
| The lineup: Majke Voss Romme (vocals, keyboards). | The lineup: Majke Voss Romme (vocals, keyboards). |
| The background: There is a track on Majke Voss Romme alias Broken Twin's debut album titled No Darkness, which is a bit rich, because to our ears it is relentlessly dark. If it had been named Nothing But Darkness we wouldn't have blinked but in the end she went with the obverse, as opposed to the obvious. After a while you might find yourself coming over all Godlike and pronouncing, "Let there be light - please." It is a small monument to sorrow, dusted with longing and the pain of loss. The album is called May and that doesn't sound right, either. "Spring is a time when everything is changing. It's a hopeful season," she has said, but whereas this time of year is all about rebirth and renewal, to us May reeks of desolation, quiet desperation and faded memory. Nothing wrong with that, of course. We're just saying. | The background: There is a track on Majke Voss Romme alias Broken Twin's debut album titled No Darkness, which is a bit rich, because to our ears it is relentlessly dark. If it had been named Nothing But Darkness we wouldn't have blinked but in the end she went with the obverse, as opposed to the obvious. After a while you might find yourself coming over all Godlike and pronouncing, "Let there be light - please." It is a small monument to sorrow, dusted with longing and the pain of loss. The album is called May and that doesn't sound right, either. "Spring is a time when everything is changing. It's a hopeful season," she has said, but whereas this time of year is all about rebirth and renewal, to us May reeks of desolation, quiet desperation and faded memory. Nothing wrong with that, of course. We're just saying. |
| Everything the 25-year-old touches turns to mournful majesty. Her debut single Sun Has Gone, released last November, featured a cover of Johnny Thunders' You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory on what they used to call "the flipside", and even there smacky abjection was replaced by a completely different kind of bleak despair. On May there are 10 further examples of the form, all produced by Broken Twin and mixed by Ian Caple, who has worked with Tindersticks and Tricky as well as Kate Bush. Remember her? | Everything the 25-year-old touches turns to mournful majesty. Her debut single Sun Has Gone, released last November, featured a cover of Johnny Thunders' You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory on what they used to call "the flipside", and even there smacky abjection was replaced by a completely different kind of bleak despair. On May there are 10 further examples of the form, all produced by Broken Twin and mixed by Ian Caple, who has worked with Tindersticks and Tricky as well as Kate Bush. Remember her? |
| Reading on mobile? Click here to listen | Reading on mobile? Click here to listen |
| May - apparently compiled from over 200 sketches recorded on laptops and phones and based on piano and/or guitar improvisations - is a triumph of simplicity and the canny deployment of voice, piano and strings. It is intensely serene, or serenely intense. Released on Anti-, label home of those other Scandinavian greats Beth Orton, Neko Case, Tom Waits and Wilco, it is based on the themes of "relations" and "emotional patterns", whatever that means. Because of a tendency to elide her vowels, it is often hard to make out what the songs are about, but by piecing lyrical fragments together and joining the dots, you can get a picture, and it is, as we say, a tad on the dark side. On opener the Aching Romme warns, "That old sinking feeling is rushing over me." On Soon After This, over light percussion and a smattering of guitar, she sings, "Smile… is fading." Glimpse of a Time finds her announcing. "I'm losing my mind." By Out of Air you may indeed be reaching for the window catch - it's like being trapped in the cellar of an airless old house. She can recall the "cold reflections of the sun", but that's outside; she's stuck indoors. There are numerous references to the sun and the ocean but you get the impression her experience of same is mere wishful thinking. "Remember now when you were young," she sings on Sun Has Gone, a pointed title if ever there was one. The nature imagery continues on If Pilots Go to Heaven, on which she has "come across the border to be where you are" and can "hear the oceans", suggesting a suicide pact that went right: "I almost regret that I've come this far…" Meanwhile, the music builds towards an arresting, elegiac, choral climax redolent of Billy Mackenzie's magnificent Beyond the Sun. 'Tis the season to be thoroughly depressed. But somehow May still makes you rejoice. | May - apparently compiled from over 200 sketches recorded on laptops and phones and based on piano and/or guitar improvisations - is a triumph of simplicity and the canny deployment of voice, piano and strings. It is intensely serene, or serenely intense. Released on Anti-, label home of those other Scandinavian greats Beth Orton, Neko Case, Tom Waits and Wilco, it is based on the themes of "relations" and "emotional patterns", whatever that means. Because of a tendency to elide her vowels, it is often hard to make out what the songs are about, but by piecing lyrical fragments together and joining the dots, you can get a picture, and it is, as we say, a tad on the dark side. On opener the Aching Romme warns, "That old sinking feeling is rushing over me." On Soon After This, over light percussion and a smattering of guitar, she sings, "Smile… is fading." Glimpse of a Time finds her announcing. "I'm losing my mind." By Out of Air you may indeed be reaching for the window catch - it's like being trapped in the cellar of an airless old house. She can recall the "cold reflections of the sun", but that's outside; she's stuck indoors. There are numerous references to the sun and the ocean but you get the impression her experience of same is mere wishful thinking. "Remember now when you were young," she sings on Sun Has Gone, a pointed title if ever there was one. The nature imagery continues on If Pilots Go to Heaven, on which she has "come across the border to be where you are" and can "hear the oceans", suggesting a suicide pact that went right: "I almost regret that I've come this far…" Meanwhile, the music builds towards an arresting, elegiac, choral climax redolent of Billy Mackenzie's magnificent Beyond the Sun. 'Tis the season to be thoroughly depressed. But somehow May still makes you rejoice. |
| The buzz: "Haunting compositions, with a vocal beauty which echoes the strength and eeriness of the northern hemisphere." | The buzz: "Haunting compositions, with a vocal beauty which echoes the strength and eeriness of the northern hemisphere." |
| The truth: Elemental, my dear Watson. Most likely to: See a darkness. | |
| Least likely to: Leave a light on. | Least likely to: Leave a light on. |
| What to buy: May is released by Anti- on April 28. | What to buy: May is released by Anti- on April 28. |
| File next to: This Mortal Coil, Billy Mackenzie, Sinead O'Connor, Fiona Apple. | File next to: This Mortal Coil, Billy Mackenzie, Sinead O'Connor, Fiona Apple. |
| Links: brokentwin.com. | Links: brokentwin.com. |
| Wednesday's new band: Intensi-T. | Wednesday's new band: Intensi-T. |