Shopping the Music Stash #2 - Oh Land

Another album eponymous of the artist, this could very well become a trend in this loge.

Danish songstress Nanna Oland Fabricius, stage name Oh Land, is another of my NYON-inspired musical finds.  She further epitomises hipster cool and fails to buck trends as she has since relocated to Brooklyn since her first album Fauna back in '08.  (As of yet I have still failed to get my hands on her debut).  Oh Land's like-named 2011 album does however serve to sound a million miles away from the Williamsburg oeuvre that clouded the music scene in recent years.

If I were to describe Oh Land's sound generically, then it would be a contemporary fusion of pop and electronica, Bjork's baby perhaps.  But this is my blog, my territory, so from henceforth, I decree that Oh Land is the Queen of celestial pop.

Close your eyes when listening to her sophomore effort, you'll feel like you been transported to a outer space cavern looking down upon earth, doing cartwheels of inexplicable glee, free from the anxiety-ridden gravity of this world.

Now, if anything, Oh Land's style has been cultivated through the school of Arcade Fire and Polyphonic Spree thought.  Multi-instrumental pieces, containing everything but the kitchen sink, but in the hands of the right minds and producers, the finished product is cohesive with beautifully distinct elements, like a patchwork quilt.

All at once introspective and uplifting, Oh Land's lyrics weave a philosophical and endearingly defiant tapestry when combined with the percussion-dominated melodies.

It sounds ghastly redundant, but when listening to Oh Land's music, you sense twinkling.  I feel so twee after stating that.... So to reassert my academic credentials, it is an otherworldly experience, and due to her pseudonym, Oh Land is obviously greatly conscience of her second self and in contradictory possession of her Other.  Jane Eyre, she is not.

She owns, and cultivates the fiction surrounding her.  She tells Interview that she has created what she feels is an epic poem, something that is not hard to agree with when she gives a glimpse of the environment she grew up in.

“We had turtles and rabbits and cats and guinea pigs and birds and chickens,” she continues, describing the fable-like environment of her childhood. “We had sewing machines and instruments and there were always the craziest people coming in and out because my mom was teaching opera or my dad was rehearsing with some musicians or my sister was making clothes.”  Source - Interview Magazine

It's little wonder her music excels in eclecticism and celestial manifestations.

I shall not litter the post with song suggestions, but this, Turn It Up, was one of my anthems from last summer, essential, I believe, to all playlists.  Enjoy.

She's a more refined Lady Gaga, this is music you will not tire of, you are welcome.  

*Disclaimer -  I admire Lady Gaga, even listen to some of her music, but it gets tedious let's be honest.