Sep 24, 2012

Teitur - "Home" [THE COPENHAGEN SESSIONS 2012]




Teitur has never been afraid to experiment. In 2009, he told me that he was searching for challenges in music and new things to learn in order to feel closer to his own music. Four Songs is perhaps first and foremost that feeling of being closer.

All four songs have been recorded in Tórshavn on the Faroe Islands in the new Studio Bloch, owned by Teitur’s long time sound engineer, Jonas Bloch Danielsen. And for the first time, Teitur has recorded solo with no backing musicians.

With the opening song and single Home, Teitur has taken full advantage of the recording circumstances. The introless melancholy piano anthem seems to suck the listener right into the small studio built into the surrounding rocks where presumably “Home is the sound of the birds early in the morning”.

Unfortunately, the eerie intensity of Home seeps out the moment the re-recording of Poetry & Aeroplanes (originally recorded as the title song for Teitur’s debut album from 2003) begins. It’s a bit slower and less polished than the original recording but doesn’t really add anything new to the song.

Like Poetry & Aeroplanes,  Jailhouse Gumbo Jones and She lives in the North are guitar based. Both songs, particularly the latter, have a hint of af Nick Drakesque feel but without quite the same intimacy and intensity of Home or of the late Englishman.

Four Songs is an interesting sneak peek into the direction that Teitur could be taking his music next. It’s intimate and warm even with the cold Atlantic tapping on the door. It’s just too bad that three of the four songs are guitar based when he currently sounds more at home at the piano.


Home is the sound of birds early in the morning
Home is the song I always remembered
Home is the memory of my first day in school
Home is the books that I carry around
Home is a alley in a faraway town
Home is the places I’ve been and where I’d like to go

Home
Always gonna feel at home
No matter where I may roam
Always gonna find my way home
No matter how far I’m gone
I’m always gonna feel this longing
No matter where I might stay

Home is a feather curling in the air
Home is flowers in the window sill
Home is all the things she said to me
Home is the photo I never threw away
Home is the smile on my face when I died
Home is the taste of the apple pie

I’ve met a woman, she’s always lived in the same place
She said home is where you’re born and raised
I’ve met a man, he said looking out to the sea
He said home is where you wanna be
I’ve met a girl in some downtown bar
She said I’ll have whatever you’re having
And I asked her how come we never met before?
She said all my life I’ve been trying to get a place of my own

I’m always gonna feel at home
No matter where I may roam
Always gonna find my way back home
No matter how far I’m gone
Always gonna feel this longing
No matter where I might stay

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