Song is powerful stuff.
You may know it.
It’s got this very special capacity for containing and transmitting emotion — out in the open. Deep-down feelings naked in song.
Unisong is full of songs about love and intimacy and domestic life. It was composed in early 2022; a shaky, just-kinda-post-covid, turning-point time, when life changes took root half-unconsciously. And, some months later, it was recorded in our bedroom — amongst our clothes, our laundry basket, our plants, our bed. The walls of that 50m2 apartment were paper-thin and the whole building shook when our neighbours absentmindedly slammed the front door. There, Bergur staked out a little studio for himself, patiently layered things up, played and recorded it all. Guitar and synth riffs couldn’t be kept from sailing through the walls and out open windows. I can imagine that the neighbours hummed the tunes while washing their dishes, washing their hair. I did. Melody permeates.
And, you know, Bergur’s very interested in that — the idea of sounds/words/melody as a carrier. He’s interested in the (I would say) magical kind of way that melody goes around and then lands and surfaces in one’s consciousness. And in Unisong, melody is actually figured as a travelling entity; runs right through it.
While I wouldn’t say that this album is the same sort of world-making project as Bergur’s previous solo releases, it does pick up from them; extends some of the ideas Bergur’s been working with. The figure of the troubadour/trobairitz is one such extension. Troubadours/Trobairitz were Europeans medieval composers and performers of lyric poetry within an oral tradition who composed on the themes of chivalry and courtly love and, I suppose, messy, daily-life in the first Romance language, Old Occitan. I figure them as freedom-loving, travelling poet-musicians, carrying information, secrets, gossip, beauty, coded in song, from door to door; dock to dock.
Melody permeates. Melody moves.
Simultaneously this album is like a second chapter in Bergur’s troubadour/trobairitz research (after Around the Songster’s Commune, 2022) and an exploration into/practicing of Bergur’s own poetic and melodic ability. It’s a beautiful experiment in unifying and synthesizing something of a conceptual nature with something autobiographical. I’d call it bare, easy-feeling, domestic pop. ‘Bare’ naked — and as in not-too-much-production. ‘Easy-feeling’ because it makes me feel easy. ‘Domestic’ á la John Lennon, Watching the Wheels, and as in home and living a life. ‘Pop’ because it is; because it’s for everyone.
It’s about travelling, longing, searching, finding — love.
Life changes.
Life-changes.
Bless the naked songster — letting it all hang out.
Katrina Niebergal
Rotterdam, May 2024
