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| 08 November 2003 |
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| New day at the pole |
| Source : All Music |
Four years impress great changes. Especially if you aren't yet 23. Between the debut of "Playing My Game" and the new dawn of "Another Day" many things happened. One above all: the changing of Lene from girl into woman".
Lene is reserved. She doesn't want to talk about the lyrics, she knows there's too much of her inside them. She backs herself discussing placid over music, shielding from intimate questions with the joy of having realized the album she dreamt. The child of Tromsų who 1999 astonished the world with her sweet folkpop, breaks the prolonged silence with her second work in studio. In the meantime she moved from the Arctic Circle to the capital Oslo, has taken breath after the whirl of fame and engagements which was splitting up into small pieces her slight body and has completed an artistical maturity, evident from the first piece.
Lene, at first listening of Another Day, leaps to ears the maturity of your songwriting compared to the first album.
There's no doubt. I've grown up, I've matured both as an human being and as a musician. I've less rush of doing all immediatly, I take my time. I believe this trait is evident in the album. I don't think it's the kind of album that captures at first listening.
Indeed, no one of the first five songs has that easy and catchy structure which characterizes Unforgivable Sinner and Sitting Down Here.
However, all the songs of the album are sweet and enjoyable. Sure, it's true there's a vein of melancholy in all of them, nevertheless I wouldn't define Another Day a sad album. You know, when I sit down with my guitar to make some music I'm generally in a melancholic mood and this of course affects the music I'm going to create.
The lyrics are very introspective, there's much of you in these pieces.
I've faced a stormy period, full of engagements. I've found myself catapulted from the school desk to the world without even realizing it. As Playing My Game began to sell everywhere, there was a moment I thought I had lost control over my life. I almost felt the need to leave, to try to go back to the natural manner with which that songs had been conceived.
To leave behind the noise?
And have the time to make my own music. To concentrate on the album and on my guitar. In a moment of peace at home has come out My Love, very bluesy and low. I began to make music to pass the winters, filling the house with warmth and still now I try never to forget it.
Did your music evolve?
When I happen to listen now to the songs of my first album I feel so strange. It seems to me that they represent me no more. Of course, they were perfect to tell about me when I was 17, but now I realize they do no longer fit. This remark was part of me during all the recording process of Another Day, I've talked a lot about this point to my producer Mike Hedges (credits: Cure, U2, Travis) while we were in London working together.
Now you've moved to Oslo. No intention to leave Norway?
Oslo is very different from my native town. For now it's sufficient this change.
When you're not doing music, what do you do?
I play Playstation, listen to music, eat pizza and watch TV. As you might see, definitely normal activities.
And what music do you listen to?
I always take with me a minidisc with lots of cds. I change a lot, but U2 are never lacking.
And the absence of a normal youth, of having never had one?
If a journalist, after having heard me sing, wouldn't have asked me a tape with some of my songs recorded on it, to take it to Virgin in Oslo, probably I wouldn't be here now. Sometimes that episode comes back to my mind but never as a regret. I enjoy what every person would for its own life: to do what she has ever dreamt of.
Translation by Lene.it staff
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