Solveig Slettahjell - Det er vi (2026) [Hi-Res]

Norwegian vocalist Solveig Slettahjell treats her songs as living, shifting things: they change depending on who plays them and open up differently with each performance. Her eighteenth album, Det er vi, the third with the Solveig Slettahjell Quartet, puts her own material back at the centre for the first time since Tarpan Seasons.

The quartet consists of pianist Andreas Ulvo, bassist Trygve Waldemar Fiske and drummer Pål Hausken; on the album they are joined by violinist Sara Rose Angelique Övinge and cellist Ole Eirik Ree, who widen the sonic palette without compromising its intimacy. The music is almost entirely unhurried ballads in which the space between sounds matters as much as the sounds themselves. Ulvo’s piano plays a special role: it does not merely accompany the voice but turns songs into small piano-trio spaces. The quartet moves freely between jazz, chamber music and older song traditions; the writing carries echoes of the parlour song, the nocturnal jazz standard and the sophisticated pop song, as memories rather than pastiche. The aim is not novelty but finding out what familiar forms can still hold today.

The album’s central question is contained in its title: “It is us”, but who exactly is “us”? The songs deal with hope, love, uncertainty and the unspoken agreements that hold shared life together. In the title song, the sequence “you – me – we” raises the question: if there is no “I”, who are “we”? The diplomacy of a single relationship echoes the diplomacy of living in a difficult world. The answers come through images of movement, changing seasons and renewal: a song born on a blank page flies off, finds another park and another listener, and returns home; in Vence, people gather sunlight, friends and memories against winter and the long wait for spring.

Alongside Slettahjell’s own Norwegian lyrics sit poems by two writers: Kaj Munk’s Den blå anemone finds hope in a flower surviving hostile soil, while Olaf Bull’s Ved et glas vin en vaarnat turns from a glass of wine toward the night, the stars and mortality. Reis med meg asks where a song lives and whether it can travel north, and Jeg kom sent embraces contradiction: clarity and concealment, faith and doubt, everything and nothing, day and night, leaving one person at the end: “you”. Hope here is not abstract optimism but something practised at close range: listening, adjusting, waiting, travelling, returning. The four musicians play the same way, leaving room for one another while ten quiet songs unfold at their own pace. This space between “I” and “you” is what “we” means.

Solveig Slettahjell Quartet

Solveig Slettahjell: Vocals
Andreas Ulvo: Piano
Trygve Waldemar Fiske: Bass
Pål Hausken: Drums

Sara Rose Angelique Övinge: Violin
Ole Eirik Ree: Cello

Tracklist:
01-01 Solveig Slettahjell - En annen park et annet sted [5:17]
01-02 Solveig Slettahjell - Det er vi [4:42]
01-03 Solveig Slettahjell - Vente [3:26]
01-04 Solveig Slettahjell - Den blå anemone [3:45]
01-05 Solveig Slettahjell - Reis med meg [3:58]
01-06 Solveig Slettahjell - Ved et glas vin en vaarnat [5:18]
01-07 Solveig Slettahjell - Underbart är kort [4:54]
01-08 Solveig Slettahjell - Det är vackrast när det skymmer [4:25]
01-09 Solveig Slettahjell - Jeg kom sent [4:13]
01-10 Solveig Slettahjell - Halldis vals (Tung tids tale) [3:32]