Review by Alec Cunningham (4 out of 5 stars)

The first thing you’re likely to notice about musician Anette Norgaard’s sound is that she carries a soft lightness in her voice that will immediately remind you of Jewel. She uses her vocals as a powerful vehicle to deliver her ideas and emotions to her listeners in a way that can’t easily be ignored. Her first album consists of 10 tracks of entirely unique, self-written content. As for the album title, A North Node, points toward a nickname she was given because of her last name and her Scandinavian heritage.

Although a handful of musicians contribute to the album’s instrumentation and backing vocals, only one musician contributes his vocals in a powerful way that could make the track be considered a duet between the two. This backing, provided by Søren Bech Madsen, takes place in the first track, called “I Go North.” Madsen’s deep vocals work well in contrast with Norgaard’s elegant voice. They are able to create such a complementary sound together that it makes you wonder what the two could accomplish working as a duo on an entire release.

It was not until the age of 34 that Norgaard first began writing her own music. Before that, she discovered her vocal talents at an early age and began perfecting her talents through schooling but was diagnosed with a polyp on her vocal folds at 26. After her surgery, she began retraining her vocals and opened her own theater company and wrote and performed her own solo musical piece at 30. Some of these songs even suggest that Norgaard has some type of background in theater. You can imagine tracks like “It’s Actually Worse” and “A Promise” being sung and acted out under a sole light on a dark theater stage.

There are soft, delicate tracks such as “If You Lay Down Your Heart,” where not much more than a piano and violin pave the way for her vocals. Likewise, there are not any songs that would necessarily be labeled as lively tracks, but if there was one that could be considered a little more upbeat than the rest it would be the hopeful track “We Walk On.” This song also happens to be her first single off of this new release. Norgaard makes it clear through her work that she pays a specific mindfulness to her craft. You can tell this especially well in “A Promise,” a heartrending song about someone passing away. She sings, “I give her a promise to always be true to the faith inside of me, and she drifts off to a heavenly door.” It’s songs like these and the words within them that make you want to believe in her work almost as much as she believes in it herself.

Before this, she released an album in 2009 titled Dramatically Different that featured musician and producer Charlie Demos. This new release also features Demos, who worked to produce Norgaard’s album as well as contributed percussion and backing vocals.

Since she holds her Scandinavian ancestry so close to her it is only natural that Norgaard might include a track that is sung in another language. She includes not one but two of these tracks, the first of which is “Saerlig Magi” and the second of which is “Morgenstund,” which ends the release.

This is an album with relatively simple tracks that are backed by a minimum amount of instrumentation. Some of this release’s most notable points include “It’s Actually Worse,” “Fall,” and “A Promise.” If you happen to even find yourself in the mood to listen to soothing music with passionate lyrics, A North Node should be one of the first tracks you turn to.

Artist: Anette Norgaard
Album: A North Node
Review by Alec Cunningham
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)