Norwegian folk duo Konradsen have today announced their highly anticipated sophomore album Michael’s Book on Bears to be released on March 8, 2024 via 777 Music. The songs are romantic, sentimental, tender, and wry, their smart arrangements sweeping you in like a strong undertow. Their real work, though, is to push you out again, toward a life you have imagined but not yet lived, no matter where it happens.
Konradsen, the project of singer Jenny Marie Sabel and multi-instrumentalist Eirik Vildgren, has also shared the first taste of the new music. “Out in the backyard” is the album’s opener and a perfect thesis of a tune that’s every bit as magnetic as the landscape it captures. Jenny sings as naturally as if she were breathing, a musical picture of the home her family indeed built in the backyard.
Konradsen spoke on “Out in the backyard,” saying, “This song is about the process of moving and building something new in a place that you thought you’d left behind. Specifically, moving back to the village you had left for good, and the tingling feeling of having to build something new among old memories. It’s about coming to terms with one’s own prejudices and the fear of being reunited with old classmates and the checkout lady who reads your shopping cart like a tarot card.”
Michael’s Book of Bears affords glimpses into the lives Jenny, Eirik, and those around them lead in Norway’s high latitudes and the everyday magic it conjures. There is fish roe and the Northern Lights, fire and ice, a lullaby-like cover of Terje Nilsen’s document of existence high in Scandinavia and a song rendered in the tongue of the indigenous Sámi people.
Enchanting and slyly provocative, Michael’s Book on Bears began like a postcard, an open invitation to leave the cities of the world behind. During the dawning days of the pandemic, singer Jenny Marie Sabel and multi-instrumentalist Eirik Vildgren finally made good on a plan they’d both considered: exiting Oslo to return to the rural reaches of northern Norway, where they’d both been raised. Eirik decamped to Senja, a mountain-bound island at the edge of the Norwegian Sea. With her young family, Jenny landed further east in her hometown of Storfjord, becoming a schoolteacher and building a cottage in her parents’ backyard with her husband by hand.
Inspired by the Mikael Niemi’s classic tale of northern Scandinavian intrigue, To Cook a Bear, and experiences Konradsen had back at home, Michael’s Book of Bears feels like a diary, distilled into its inspirational essence and then recast as 11 gorgeous hymns, all proud of the woods from which they came.
Konradsen has announced a run of dates in Norway for 2024, see below for a full rundown and watch this space for additional touring plans.
Upcoming Tour Dates (Norway):
3/8/24 – Parkteateret, Oslo
3/9/24 – HAVET, Trondheim
3/21/24 – Tou scene, Stavanger
3/22/24 – Kulturhuset, Bergen
