Stina Nordenstam

Stina always makes me pitch a piece.

(Sorry.)

Next week is the twenty year anniversary of Dynamite and I am counting on someone in this thread to have pitched a piece relating to it

― boxedjoy, Wednesday, September 7, 2016 8:55 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sadly I have given up on people loving what I love

katherine I actually assumed you would have something in the works for this

believe me, if I thought I could successfully pitch it I would, but generally no one gives a shit about reissues that aren't already part of the canon

(s/reissues/anniversaries, though The World Is Saved sure didn't get much fanfare when it was re-released earlier)

(feel free to insert "have you considered that the problem is you," also)

I was listening to ‘Dynamite’ again this morning after recommending it to Brad, and it occurred to me that - what with the songs’ persistent themes of acceptance of, and identification with, externally (and at times randomly) imposed violence, loss and fear - a good alternate title for the album would have been ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

It would have made me lol (with dread) at any rate.

will she ever do anything again? has she done anything since Nine Horses?

A little part of my dies each time this thread is revived.

:(

http://desireavenue.free.fr/phpbb3/viewforum.php?f=3

^the saddest message board on the internet. every couple of months, one of about 4 active posters will start a new thread along the lines of, "UPDATE: she doesn't have a new album out, but I found this cool promo on eBay with an UNCROPPED version of the ASCHE cover photo!" and the other 3 posters will go, "that's nice, dear, but where on earth has our queen disappeared to!?"—and you get the impression that all of them have had Stina on Google alert for the past decade and that they die a little each time her name pops up without the promise of a new release

now i have 'stina / tell me have you seen her?' going round my head in loop

lol

(there are no Stinaupdates, sorry. but it's Stinaseason again)

The 00s poll has sent me scurrying back to, and has massively reignited my enthusiasm for, This is Stina Nordenstam (which wasn't nominated). I'd always gone along with the idea that The World is Saved was the apex of Stina - much more congruent than its predecessor and with more robust songwriting and arrangements, but This is now sounds like a much stranger/less earthbound record.

I'd forgotten the extent to which it was pitched as a big expensive pop move because it's so tiny a thing and seems to have left almost zero cultural footprint (unlike e.g. ASCHE). It was one of those albums by a slightly culty artist which was presumably designed to cross over but didn't any receive any tangible publicity push from (Sony?) so seemed to evaporate on contact with the world.

It got a full UK release but I never saw a copy of it until a load turned up in Fopp for £3 apiece circa 2009. All of the albums are on iTunes/Spotify now but for years and years they seemed to be just slightly out of reach.

The songs sound like she's extracted their internal supporting structures and left them out of the fridge to curdle but the whole thing bustles along really satisfyingly. There's barely time to get lost in the album because there is so little of it - it is glimpsed and then it's not there. On the cover she's spotlighted but shrouded in gloom; as always, you can barely make her out.

Brett sounds like a pitchshifted Stina = he sounds great/unobtrusive - def the best 00s record that he was involved with.

A little part of my dies each time this thread is revived.

― boxedjoy, Monday, April 30, 2018 9:37 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

otherwise, yeah, it wouldn't necessarily seem so, but IMO this album has the most devastating songs of hers -- "everyone else in the world," "sharon and hope," "so lee" -- she really doesn't get enough credit as a trad singer-songwriter.

and yes the obvious counterpoint is "ok but dynamite exists," but that's more devastated. not sure how the track on here that is clearly a dynamite offcut fits the theory, but she does

Yes! Love Dynamite to bits but it keeps you at a remove whereas this one skips along pretty accessibly for the most part. It seems really at odds with itself in a way that neither Dynamite or TWIS are which is maybe more discomfiting for the listener. "The Diver" is the Dynamite offcut I guess?

I'm almost as preoccupied with the presentation of it. Just dug out my CD copy and it has a hyper-glossy booklet and a really unloveable typeface and generally feels like a really crisply efficient piece of product. and calling it This is Stina Nordenstam implies definitive artistic statement, but, it just oozes reluctance.

...and, YouTube provides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G06-Y1Wc6oE

(30 mins of Stina, circa 2001, on This is..., while wandering around arctic Stockholm)

The current era has me returning to 'Dynamite' a lot. Still have no recollection how I heard 'This Is' circa 2001, but after that obsessively sought out all her albums (didn't seem easy to find in the US back then). 'Dynamite' has remained on of my very favorite albums of the 90s--in that mystical realm with late Talk Talk or Mark Hollis' solo LP, or Bjork's 'Homogenic'--just music outside of time. I wish it were much better known/appreciated--I feel like if it came out now it would probably be better received, and would still sound completely fresh.

In penance for bumping the thread and getting folks hopes up (or, these days, fears up), a couple tracks I somehow never heard, despite being so in love with her music all these years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTyf-2HU9Ig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgfT4pCV4kA

Also just since it's not posted in the thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtKqH0Fk1_8

Personally, I think she comes across when there's some grit and gristle to wrestle with her childlike voice. But I love her in nearly any context.

Until reading the Martin Aston 4AD book a few years back, I had no idea that she'd been a mooted 4AD-signee circa 1991 - Ivo apparently decided that she'd be too challenging to work with! Does seem like she'd have been a good fit for 90s 4AD (whatever that means - "bit gothy and elusive" possibly).

Dynamite def feels like the most auteurish album - so much space in it; completely agree that it would probably find a more receptive audience if released today.

I wish it would at least get a reissue (and 1st US release), to give it the opportunity for critical reappraisal and exposure...

(Speaking of, look up the Allmusic review of 'Dynamite'--one of the worst, most off-base reviews of anything I've ever seen)

dynamite is one of those albums I think is perfect in theory, but in practice I am not often really in a place to listen to (probably a good thing). this track is the exception, kind of a bridge to the world is saved in the strings throughout, also probably one of my favorite love-songs-of-sorts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bN2GNXy4Nc

I'd never heard this Stina x The Knife:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-JuGewOvQY

x-post. Was there any context to the idea that she'd be too challenging to work with?

Strangely, I'd started making myself a compilation "for these times" and hadn't really got any further than a David Sylvian track and a Stina Nordenstam one.

Oh, cheers for posting that Knife remix Soundslike. Not sure how I missed that.

oh yeah that remix was how I first got into the knife

also speaking of david sylvian tracks, stina nordenstam tracks, and tracks "for these times"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga4IcaRsHic

Was there any context to the idea that she'd be too challenging to work with?

They'd initially offered to release Memories of a Color but after meeting with her, Ivo decided that a working relationship would be overly complicated - apparently her personality "mirrored her beguiling, obsessive music" and he wasn't in the frame of mind to engage with this at the time.

Ha, yes, Katherine - that was one of the few tracks on there.

re: Stina and Sylvian, I'm somehow convinced (with no proof whatsoever) she wrote "Greetings from the Old World" by way of a salute to him when he moved from England to America. I remember reading her generic explanation of the song on her Myspace site and adding (my) 2+2.

discovered her thanks to akm's mention in the cassandra jenkins thread and wow i love her first two albums, especially and then she closed her eyes. i really love all the sax, it feels like music i've been wanting to hear forever.

dynamite is intriguingly strange but hasn't quite clicked for me yet, it's quite a left turn but i'm hoping it will open up to me. it feels sonically of a piece with from the choirgirl hotel, but pushed further into that realm in a way that tori never did. the contrast between her quiet, deadpan vocals and the kinda industrial/post-punk backing is fascinating

looking forward to checking out the rest of her output

The first two Stinas are def the most aligned with the Cassandra Jenkins record (which is completely great), insofar as they have more light and warmth in them than her later albums - the 'sound' of early spring, watery tentative sunshine, lengthening days etc. Really brisk and fresh.

The subsequent Stinas all feel really bound up with autumn/winter to me, to varying extents - all are great but it's a much chillier vibe overall. Dynamite is the one that leans most into 'encroaching gloom'. FTCH is a really interesting comparison and one that hadn't occurred to me before.

I disappeared down a bit of a This is Stina Nordenstam wormhole upthread but I do still think it's her strangest record in that it tries to make a big (tiny) crossover pop record out of a fuzzier version of the Dynamite sonic palette and ends up sounding like some kind of plaintive alien bulletin or... something.

I think the World Is Saved is her best album. I wish she'd return to recording.

God I love 'Dynamite' so much. Dig 'This Is' and 'People Are Strange' and 'The World is Saved' and the rest. But 'Dynamite' stands out, for me. Such an elemental sound--those crunchy guitars paired with the Reich-ian strings, and her voice... An album that hasn't aged a day.

I'm afraid she's going to go the way of Mark Hollis--silent until silenced.

I feel like there's a big jump in skill and quality between albums one and two - And She Closed Her Eyes really codifies some qualities that define her subsequent work despite the massive stylistic shifts.

Like, the voice is the same but from the first line of "When Debbie's Back From Texas" you can hear how much more aware and deliberate her use of it is - this Rickie Lee Jones in an iron lung quality, superficially blank and stripped (or evacuated) of affect, yet perversely affecting. A quality that extends to her suddenly incredibly sharp lyrical economy, conveying entire worlds and personas with the smallest number of words possible.

"From Cayman Islands With Love" from The World Is Saved is a great example of this:

Half a day behind and miles away
I'm on a beach
The only one around I know who can't
Enjoy the heat
I bought the postcard
Now I have to write the words
I left the country
There's a chance you may have heard
Grand Cayman is great
Of course it is
Weather like this
Living is great
Of course it is
What else did you think
What else did you think
I said I want a man and not a boy
You left the room
The Caribbean sun so leaves me cold
You never do
I want to see you
Even want to see you bleed
I can't believe I paid for this
There's nothing here I need
Grand Cayman is great
Of course it is
Weather like this?
Living is great
Of course it is
What else did you think
What else did you think

... The deliberateness emptiness of "weather like this?"... I love it.

... That said, the last two tracks of Memories of a Colour are the best on the album, so if you listen to the first albums back to back it's like Stina is gearing herself up.

I bought "And She Closed Her Eyes" in 1994 when I was in high school - I think I bought "Park Life" (!) in the same haul. Mark Radcliffe had been playing "Little Star" every night on his Radio 1 late show.

Anyway, it's just the most beautiful record - I think it might be favourite ever album, the only album I've never gotten bored of listening to. I used to put in on with "Five Lives Left".

I can't believe The World is Saved was released 16 years ago. And look at idiot me above, thinking ten years was a long time.