Birds sometimes dance

Sometimes, an album can be really hard to review. Moddi’s Floriography is an album that really overwhelmed me. Usually it takes me a few days, at most a week to make up my mind and get my thoughts down in words. It’s been a few weeks now, but I think this is the kind of album that needed those weeks.

Moddi, or Pål Moddi Knutsen, is a curly haired musician from an Island called Senja, far up north in norway. He’s already played at by:Larm twice and once at the Øya festival, the latter gave him good words from the guys over at Pitchfork. He’s also released a split-vinyl with Einar Stray and a self-released live album, but Floriography is his first studio album. It’s recorded in Greenhouse Studio in Iceland and produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson, who’s worked with artists like Björk and Múm.

I have to admit, I’m not much of a patient person. I tend to get bored easily and there’s a high threshold for me to really enjoy instrumental or quite calm and slow music that’s not very catchy. The first few times I heard through the album I liked some parts of this and that song a lot, but the rest felt a bit boring. Kind of like how you’d like particular scenes of a movie and skip forward to them. I actually feel bad when it’s like that, guilty that I don’t appreciate or understand the music. Listening through it several times more however, usually separates the boring from the genius. Floriography went through that test and prevailed.

Moddi’s music is a beautiful landscape inhabited by an accordion and tender strings, as well as piano, guitar and the usual stuff. It sounds a bit like Beirut, if you swap the balkan-inpiration with Norwegian folk music.

Even if there’s a fair amount of instruments playing, the music is quite minimalistic really. It’s all built around the vocals. Pål’s vocals go all the way from careful whispering and up to a loud and passionate scream. What strikes you is how real it is, he’s not afraid of putting emotions into his singing. At first you might feel that he’s screaming just a bit too loud, but that’s the thing, it’s supposed to be that way. Emotions control his volume, not how his voice sounds the cleanest.

All in all, Floriography is a brilliant album, but I’ll have to save the full score for later. I have a feeling that there’s potential for even more in this guy. There’s a 10 with your name on it Moddi, so come get it!

Moddi – Magpie Eggs

- André Lersveen, 03/03/2010