Features arrangements by Vince Mendoza
Escapist nostalgia
”It’s a complicated world, but if we could bring a little more love into it, that seems like a good place to start,” says Norwegian singer Silje Nergaard writing about her latest album. On her website she says that she worked on this album for three years. Recorded with her ”longtime” Norwegian jazz trio and this time featuring the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra with string arrangements by multi-Grammy award winner Vince Mendoza that trio is Badgers and Other Beings pianist Helge Lien, bassist Finn Guttormsen and his Farmers Market bandmate drummer Jarle Vespestad with whom she is touring this year.
And certainly the best songs here embrace love.
An album that has its roots in a 1970s discovery of a cassette tape that her parents made containing standards such as Sherman, Davis, ‘Ram’ Ramirez 1940s classic ‘Lover Man’ synonymous with Billie Holiday, one of the songs here on Tomorrow We’ll Figure Out The Rest.
Now aged 58 Nergaard also discovered another cassette recorded privately again dating back to 1971 that contained her family’s own home music. And that tape inspired this affectionate and loving album which contains interludes from the tape.
A personal tribute to her parents and a musical journey inspired by memories, moments with her family, and scenes from her life, then.
A Pat Metheny collaborator in the 1990s
Nergaard emerged in the 1990s with a hit single in Norway called ‘Tell Me Where You’re Going’ featuring Pat Metheny. Her style sits well with another Metheny collaborator the Polish singer Anna Maria Jopek who worked with the guitar icon on Upojenie.
Mendoza and Nergaard previously collaborated on the Grammy-nominated album from 2009, A Thousand True Stories. There you’ll find co-writes with her lyricist Mike McGurk on songs like ‘Laura’. McGurk’s input is still a potent factor in the Nergaard sound.
Beatles cover
With an old photo of her parents when they were young on the cover you get a sense of dancing to the music of time throughout. Not everything is our cup of tea but the songs we liked most are the highly orchestrated and lush ‘A Perfect Night to Fall in Love’ McGurk/Nergaard co-write and a lovely reading of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) classic ‘Here There and Everywhere.’ Some songs like ‘My Man, My Man’ operate just as happily as easy listening pop.
Nergaard does lilting innocence very well and in the Beatles cover this translates well as it does on the dreamy McGurk co-write ‘Dance Me Love’ amid the luxuriance of strings. Not an album for cynics!
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