For evidence of the avidity of Scandinavian music enthusiasts and aficionados in London, endeavour to get down to the gloriously Nordic affair that is Ja Ja Ja. A short and smooth glide down Pentonville Road however is the Scala where on an aptly icy eve a queue splurges out from the door come six. Although winter darkness may have a profound effect on the Norwegian modus vivendi, while it may be dank and drab already, to keep things in context, this is obscenely early. The nearby Kings Cross is still a hive of commuter-centric activity and yet forever greater numbers continue to mill about this shady corner, huddled around the venue's entrance for warmth like eskimos enrobed in faux-fur parkas encircling dimming embers.
All obsessions start somewhere and personally, a now-deeply ingrained infatuation with chittering, tonight seemingly cheerful Norwegian songstress Ane Brun was not so much set alight as passionately aflame by fourth studio effort It All Starts With One, a delicate and airy yet acutely poignant record freed from her clutches a few weeks ago like the most patient whiter-than-whiteboard dove. It's aired fully and wholly fulfillingly and as a result, tickets for tonight's sold out show are clutched tightly, anxiously, Brun's sonic serenity bewilderingly offset by passive aggression that momentarily erupts in yowls of rabid hatred and overt disgruntlement. While such ambience may detract slightly from the supreme majesty of the evening's more momentous occasions, if Brun remonstrates a lack of worshipping "your life" it's seemingly purely because every last ounce of veneration is reserved for she. Opening with the surging organ sparsity of These Days, Brun emerges cloaked as if stepping out from a sunless and sinister woodland, only to reveal herself once already within the warming embrace of her audience. For hers is a set that becomes cosier and better fitting as it courses by, like a nicely worn, warming jumper that becomes increasingly bobbly as the manifest emotivity of Brun's compositional ability bristles.
Set against a backdrop of exposed filament lamps that spark, dwindle and die like fleeting Scandinavian sunlight, and stringed glimmers that resemble the Northern Lights that twinkle before a blanket of dark, dark night, all things visual are spectacularly married to the choruses of What's Happening With You And Him and Dirty Windshield as they crescendo and diminish almost whimsically. The rap-like Puzzle feels skittish yet truly idiosyncratic, perfectly counteracting against the preceding To Let Myself Go, several minutes teeming with swooning harmonies and rawboned acoustic resonances. A constant and continual aspect however is its percussive momentum, as dual drummers practically duet without ever duelling, wispy jazz sticks whispering to one another on a stupendous take on The Light From One having already gallivanted boisterously through the gay prance of Do You Remember. It's a jaunt that feels somewhat disparate given the overriding reedy melancholia of her chosen setlist, a little out on a fidgety limb, and furthermore Words is all too floaty, flecked with the impression of barely discernible mist that cocoons the pricks of spindly ferns.
Swaddled attentively within her second encore however is Undertow, a track that makes this evening, and could quite conceivably enlighten any. If on record it's almost too painstakingly harrowing even to experience, live, rendered inescapable, it leaves you feeling like a bruised and bloodied figure at the jagged toes of a snaggy cliff, barely breathing and exhausted beyond feeling following brutal ravaging in raging torrent. It may be due to the Siberian gusts being puffed out from a nearby air conditioning unit, but as ripples of cold shudder roll from head to toe hairs involuntarily quaver like a time-lapse of a particularly active coral reef. Brun laments her manner perhaps being "too Scandinavian" on the exceptionally sentimental Changing Of The Seasons, although in this seasonally bleak spell, almost everything she does seems frighteningly exemplary.
