In the bringing-it-down-a-notch tradition of Cat Power's The Covers Record, melancholic Norwegian duo Susanna and the Magical Orchestra have followed its ice-veined 2004 debut with a collection of cover tunes. Speaking with the band members in August, they told me Melody Mountain was originally supposed to be an EP. They decided to record some of the covers they'd been doing live and the idea spiraled into a larger project. However they arrived at this 10-song collection, it plays to the band's strengths: Two years after the release of List of Lights and Buoys, their spare, unforgettable take on Dolly Parton's "Jolene" remains the band's calling card.
Instead of coasting along with expected, aesthetically linked updates, Melody Mountain's oddball set list includes imaginative revisions: AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top", backed by, among other things, cembalo, a baroque keyboard instrument; a simplified, back-porch incision of Prince's "Condition of the Heart"; a Cat Powered ramble through Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". To the band's credit, every choice, no matter how strange at first, ends up sounding real. They own each unironic, personalized revision; this isn't some indulgent Gus Van Sant meta game.
The honest sound could be a result of the pared-down, two-person lineup, coupled with the crystalline Deathprod production. Rather than lugging along some weepy string section, the "orchestra" is just one guy, ex-Jaga Jazzist and Shining member Morten Qvenild. His instrumental expertise and good taste lends intricately lush, deftly subtle keyboard/piano/church organ-based backdrops. More striking than the band's minimalism are the pristine, unpolluted vocals of Susanna Karolina Wallumrød. A true talent in the vein of Chan Marshall and Mira Billotte, she sings like a Norwegian mountain stream, never over-enunciating or throwing in unnecessary trills.
Melody Mountain's interpretations vary in shades and gradations. Kiss' "Crazy, Crazy Nights" becomes a shivery, damp-highway anthem for the dispossessed; Scott Walker's "It's Raining Today", a spooky, pedal-steeled, echo-chambered finale to a one-woman musical. Live, it was "Hallelujah" that made the people cry. Most versions of Leonard Cohen's transcendent ballad can send tear ducts into overtime, but it's a song Susanna and the Magical Orchestra have been performing for a while and Wallumrod's pacing and phrasing were masterful-- like she snuck herself into each note and lived an entire life inside it before moving onto the next. Here, as the hushed, funereal opener, it's pretty tough to top.
The song earning the most attention is a taffy-stretched "Love Will Tear Us Apart", wherein Ian Curtis's most famous libretto is laid bare and slowed to half speed. The original's nervously bottled dance is replaced by a languid, nearly a capella drift. To go the pop culture route, if this version soundtracked Donnie Darko, that make-out scene would become more tenderly melancholic, less heady and nerve-wracked.
In a great year for mountain albums (think Blood Mountain and Return to Cookie Mountain, among others), Susanna & the Magical Orchestra contribute the most enigmatic collection to the pile. Of course, there's reason to be restrained in the praise: They do a nice job, but these are only covers, and it'll be interesting to hear their own songwriting developments on future records. In the meantime, Melody Mountain is an example of expansive restraint that, surprisingly enough, makes for good driving music. Maybe it's the ghosts of particular songs' rocker pasts propelling the molasses flow? Hypothermia's phantom aches?
