Henriette Sennenvaldt, the former front woman of the acclaimed, boundary defying Danish band, Under Byen, delves further into the far edges of pop on an album that explores the permeable boundaries between the world and ourselves. On her debut solo LP, Something Wonderful she explores matters of the heart, though what is at stake is romance in its most inclusive sense. The album commits to the slowness and rapture, but balks at the particularity of sentimental narratives. Mining a musical history, Sennenvaldt croons, wavers, whoops, and whispers her way through layers of textured sound and merges several positions into paradoxical beauty. Something Wonderful will be released on November 13, 2020 and is available to pre-order HERE.
Listeners are ushered into Henriette’s mysterious music space with album opener, “New Skill.” A soft “hi …high.” welcomes new ears to a slowly unravelling beginning. “I moved into a new apartment,” says Henriette. “For weeks I didn’t go outside during the day. I shopped at the gas station at night and lived on the fast food they had there. I put up yellow curtains. I sat in a chair. I listened to the silence. Atoms of air in my kitchen became somehow perceivable. Things started to glow. It was a very quiet ecstasy. “It’s about how the relationship to yourself and to the world can be absolutely new, about discovering yourself as company.”
“Having had the pleasure of working together during the Under Byen era, Paper Bag is excited to have the opportunity to release this remarkable and unique vision from Henriette Sennenvaldt,” notes the label. “Built around subtle and surprising arrangements that reveal more with every listen, Something Wonderful occupies a very intimate space, taking the audience down a path that is as beautiful as it is unexpected.”
Throughout Something Wonderful, horns blow – feverishly, delicately, confused, or structured – in the richly instrumented arrangements’ collage-like style that encourage each voice to do more than merely accompany. They contradict each other, often appear out of joint, approach and leave abruptly or softly, and form a continuity of interruption that carves out a choppy, precarious groove someplace between fragility and possibility.
The album was recorded by Peter Barnow, Nils Gröndahl, Mike Hillier, John McEntire and Henriette Sennenvaldt in various sessions in Chicago, Copenhagen and London over 2016 – 2019.
