Jorgen Thorsson – I Die In English (Independent)
The music hall-style opener, “Rusty Flowers”, nearly put me off listening properly to the rest of the album. However, these days I work hard to overcome any built-in prejudice that might hinder my objectivity, and it paid off here to some extent. Sweden’s (much delayed) answer to Tom Waits soon sheds the ‘oompah’ factor, opting more for a dark, reflective set of songs that are at times both majestic and somehow, desperate.

It’s a bit like starting a garden design with one of those awful ornate fountains (the cherubic ones), plonking it right in front / centre as you go in, and then deciding that all the flower beds will be full of deep reds and deeper violets, plus any black flowers that can be found. All of the bushes will have the darkest green foliage, that look as though you’d need a machete to find a path through.

It certainly is an unusual affair, as there also appears to be an area set aside for the kids to play in, hence the track “Despair”, sung in school French for some reason, which follows “Voice Mail”, two minutes of turgid inner thoughts from a slightly intoxicated viewpoint, about missing the recipient (“Sleep” has another voice mail interrupting the singing and stark piano accompaniment for some reason I have yet to fathom, thus spoiling the song’s flow). Where the kid’s play, then, is fraught with poison ivy, sinister pitcher plants and maybe broken glass in the borders.

I won’t suggest that Jorgen is going to set us all on fire just yet, but with tracks like “Two”, “To Warsaw”, “Cool Song (Under The Influence)” and the gorgeous ‘hymn’ “Wander/Wonder”, he shows that his design talent might lie in delivering more of his subtle side, rather the attempted grandiose schemes and layouts. 
www.myspace.com/jorgenthorsson

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