Diandra Reviews It All

Norwegian indie-folk artist Siv Jakobsen debut, The Nordic Mellow, is exactly as titled. From beginning to end, you feel as if a meditation guru pressed play on their favorite sounds for tranquility. As rhythms crystallize and lay like snowflakes gathering on a wintering ground, Jakobsen arises like a Ice Princess; ready to snow through the cloudy days of yours and her life to give a sense of purity even in darkness.

For the album, Jakobsen recalls the months she lived in a tiny, shared room in Brooklyn; where she lives the funnest, loneliest, and most self-reflecting times of her life. Nothing like NYC, to make the flocks of youth who come here “to make it anywhere” feel like they are both conquering and conquered by the world. The juxtaposition of these completely opposite, but extreme feelings are heard through songs, “Berry and Wythe”, “Shallow Digger”. and “We Are Not In Love”. Lyrically, Jakobsen peers into her life as if she is watching it through a hole in the wall. Every movement and motivation is watch with extra intent and intensity because of how much is blocked off from her view. Being a human being is packed with sentimental hiccups and spiritual chapters, and, for Jakobsen, her time in Brooklyn was both. “Crazy”, “Space”, and “Change” feel like episodes from a Millennial tv show where a young protagonists has to figure out if her twenty-somethings will actually lead her to the most stable “thirty-somethings”. The irony of being young is that it is treated like a platform/ race to get old well. Your twenties are like a “quarter life crisis” where every move you make is, inadvertently, strategic in assuring you end up “stable” in your own home, family, and career. Hence, Jakobsen captures the pressures and pleasure of being a young woman who wants to live in the present but has to or, at least, cannot stop acknowledging the future. Such an emotional complexity contrasts beautifully with her delicate, purifying voice.

From violins to fragile, guitar chords, The Nordic Mellow drapes over you like a “Blanket”, and Jakobsen’s voice is the hot cocoa; she is frothed with sugar and light, earthly undertones. You sip on her voice as if it warms your insides to know that someone else has no clue what “being twenty” is all about, especially in Brooklyn. Thus, from every instrumental arranged to fall from the sky as if clouds were crying white rain to every vocal emoted to feel shivered by youth, The Nordic Mellow is Millennial mindfulness at its best. For More Information On Siv Jakobsen And To Buy The Nordic Mellow On August 25 Click Here.