CD: Ane Brun – It All Starts With One

Although Norwegian, Ane Brun’s biggest impact has been in Sweden, where she lives. Since her last studio album, she’s toured and recorded with Peter Gabriel. Her new album again finds her diving off the expected path, throwing herself forcefully onto new musical ground.

Her voice is still recognisable. Crystalline, tremulous and keening, it’s meant to bear emotion. But the aptly titled It All Starts With One might as well be a debut album. Always a stellar songwriter, Brun chose to get her material across in a familiar, largely folk-styled way. It could be the Gabriel experience that's pushed her, it could be the fact that this is the first album for Balloon Ranger, her own independent label. Or it might be the influence of percussionist Per Eklund, who was integral to Lykke Li’s similarly direct Wounded Rhymes. Whatever it is, this is a new red-blooded, invigorated Ane Brun.

Sexualised too. “Do you remember the late morning, when we went back to bed, when we found our first position?” she sings on the album's first single, the tribal “Do You Remember”. The frankness, a rawness, courses through It All Starts With One. Opening cut “These Days” is hymnal, punctuated with rippling, echoing percussion and is suffused with this passion, capturing the conflict between recognising an awareness of the effect of love and the need to blind yourself to it to preserve a balance. Sometimes, though, it’s best not to retreat. It’s powerful. Arrangements are sparse, open and alive. After exposure to It All Starts With One, it’s clear Ane Brun is brimful of life.

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Watch the video for “Do You Remember”