Susanne Sundfør ‎- Music For People In Trouble (2017)

Norwegian singer/songwriter and producer Susanne Sundfør’s 2015 international breakthrough album Ten Love Songs set out its ambitions with its title, and it followed through.

Musically and lyrically, Music for People in Trouble retains the dark heart of the previous album, but the mood is more introspective, at least on the surface. The arrangements are consistently sparse, with Sundfør’s clear, close-up voice joined by one or two instruments at a time: there’s a sense that Sundfør is alone; an often uncomfortable intimacy. Deceptively simple accompaniments of slide guitar, piano and acoustic guitar are framed with short field recordings of streams, birdsong, church bells; contextualising the struggles of the songs within a world that continues as normal despite relentless internal and external conflict.