There's a video floating around the internet that shows Theresa Andersson performing her song "Na Na Na" in her kitchen. It's just her, barefoot with denim cuffs rolled up, surrounded by a phalanx of instruments. The clip starts with her playing a few chords on a zither, then pounding out the drumbeat on two toms, then looping the rhythm back as she switches to guitar, keys, singing, and violin. The technique is nothing new or necessarily innovative-- this sort of looping is fairly common in indie pop-- but Andersson the one-woman-show makes it look as easy as playing Rock Band. And possibly more fun.
Of course, it's not easy. "Na Na Na" is carefully instead of casually constructed, taking the limitations of this approach (no room for solos or much spontaneity) and casting them as limitless possibilities. Most of her third album, Hummingbird, Go!, was recorded in that very kitchen and similarly builds from the drumbeat up, whether she's playing it herself or sampling from another source. "Na Na Na" changes very little from YouTube to CD: It still turns on a gently insistent hook and Andersson's bright vocals, although the saxophone on the album version sounds superfluous. Still, give her credit for daring to show the seams of her songs.
Andersson is an anomaly of sorts: Born in Sweden, she moved to New Orleans in the 1990s, where she has recorded off and on ever since. Her first album was Dixieland jazz; on a later EP she switched to Louisiana blues-rock similar to early Lucinda Williams. The degree to which Andersson has reinvented herself might imply she has no musical center or, worse, that she is an opportunist, but Hummingbird, Go! instead reveals a musical restlessness guiding her career. The album is all over the place. Immediately following "Na Na Na" comes "Clusters", which crafts a strange, soft backdrop-- not unlike that recent Silje Nes album-- for a loving ode to her garden, finding the perfect melody for terms like "butterfly oxide" and "cerulean tulips."
"Birds Fly Away" skitters on a skipping beat (courtesy of Smokey Johnson's "I Can't Help It, Pts. 1 & 2"), handclaps, and backing vocals that suggest "ornate Motown production" without actually trying to sound like an ornate Motown production. That hint of R&B reappears in the short "Introducing the Kitchenettes"-- nothing but sha-la-la-la's and woo-woo-woo's-- and "Hi-Low", in which the falsetto Kitchenettes comment on Andersson's playful vocals. "Japanese Art" is a showtune in search of a show, with the singer's vocals turning brassy and bold like a slightly dialed-back Liza Minelli. "Innan du Går", a Swedish-language duet with Ane Brun, is muted and graceful, a whisper among laughs, while "God's Highway" with Tobias Fröberg is a more accessible folk-rock song that gives them a tender melody on which to hang their harmonies. Traces of her jazz and blues-rock past remain, such as the exuberance of her Dixie-klezmer fiddling on "Japanese Art". These elements add splashes of unexpected color to these songs, bringing the extroversion of those styles to the too often introverted genre of indie pop and making Hummingbird, Go! sound to big for any kitchen to contain.
