Fallulah

Fallulah’s debut album “The Black Cat Neighbourhood” cements her transformation from an insecure outsider to a spiritual foot stomping indie diva.
The songs rummage somewhere between pop and bustle and does so with so much confidence, that it is hard to believe that the woman behind them has a fear of singing in front of others. But Fallulah pushes herself over the edge and shows her flair for the impassioned and laterally rhythmic. It gives the universe an inner tension and an ear for the drama that take after trendsetting artists like Florence & The Machine and Bat For Lashes.
“I like to show both strength and brittleness in my songs. That it’s full of contrasts. Because there isn’t anybody, who is just strong or weak. Like I don’t put on the same clothes every morning”, says Fallulah, who outside the musical world answers to the name of Maria Apetri.
Her life began in a town house in Amager where she at the age of 5 wrote little poems on Post-It notes. Meanwhile her Romanian choreographer-dad filled the rooms with beats from Balkan and Fallulah has taken that legacy and intertwined it into her own bittersweet universe. It is noticeable on the hint of folklore but also in the production which Fridolin Nordsø is responsible for.
“I feel that my dad’s spirit is on the entire album. On the up-tempo-tracks it’s in the rhythm and in my cries. Because that is something I have from him”, she states and elaborates:
“In the slowly songs you can feel him in the sadness and the melancholy. “Give Us A Little Love” is seen through the eyes of a child. It is my brother’s and my voice from a time, when we were left to care for ourselves without being prepared for it”.
And “The Black Cat Neighbourhood” swarms with that kind of reflection of the sad/cheerful attractions of life - often seen in an oblique fashion. The idea for the title-track is for instance inspired by a street she has walked up and down morning after morning, which was crowded by black cats.
“The song represents an environment where black cats are the only ones who understand each other. They speak the same language and are part of the same private club. It’s a comment on feeling left out and in the fight for the right to be you own person”, says Fallulah.
That is a struggle she is familiar with. Because Maria Apetri spent her teenage years being withdrawn and serious and the thought of getting up on a stage and sing was terrifying. But an increasing restlessness drove her to New York which receives a well-deserved homage on “New York, You’re My Concrete Lover” because it was here that her creative bubble, which had been growing inside her finally burst.
So back in Copenhagen she started arranging concerts and she bought instruments she thought were cool and thought herself to play. Her first performance were three songs in front of her friends and since then Fallulah grew into a underground darling via her immediate and organic hold on writing songs and performance.
“I have figured out that I can liberate myself through music and have fun when I’m on stage. It has given me so much that I have found out that that is what I’m good at. And it is a huge gift to be able to do it.”
In 2009 Soundvenue Music Magazine picked up on her and recommended her warmly by making her “Soundvenue Selected” and later on National Danish Radio P3 jumped on board and made her first single “I Lay My Head” as “This Weeks unavoidable”.
Fallulah will be touring in Denmark now.