Teitur
Tórshavn, Streymoy, Faroe Islands | INDIE
Music
Press
Though it seems, on first hearing, not to have the depth or diversity of 2009's stunning The Singer, Teitur Lassen's fifth collection of songs soon winds itself inexorably round one's heart, its emotional tendrils taking purchase like clematis scaling a garden wall.
The main difference is in the arrangements. Gone are its predecessor's more exotic excursions into minimalism and art-song, replaced by a more direct, American-style of arrangement that sometimes seems uncomfortably naked. But it's naked in the manner of Paul Simon in his less cryptic moments (such as, say, "Something So Right"). There's a simplicity and immediacy that cuts away any unnecessary poetic obfuscation in tracks like the rumination on time and change, "Waverly Place", and the paean to passivity "Fly On The Wall". "What can you be but a fly on the wall," asks Teitur, "when the world is so great, and we are so small?"
Like Simon, he has the rare gift to spark recognition with a single line, then expand the recognition into revelation. "All the things that I owned ended up owning me," observes the protagonist of "When I Had It All", going on to realise, too late, that all he really needed was his now-departed lover. In the punningly-titled "Betty Hedges" ("hedging bets", see?), his incurable procrastination is perfectly skewered with the observation, "Big questions need small answers like yes or no". As so often in Lassen's songs, romantic expectations prove unreliable. "I never rode a freight train... never got drunk in Spain," laments the wannabe-free subject of "Freight Train", while Los Angeles is painted in pastel hues of disappointment in "You Never Leave LA". Fittingly, the Seventies singer-songwriter style employed on most of the arrangements ensures that the latter has exactly the appropriate Asylum Records sound for a song which depicts Laurel Canyon filling up with broken dreams.
Only on "Stormy Weather" does the arrangement strike out for uncharted terrain, with slow, expectant piano monochords and a yawning bass growl, akin to throat-singing, eventually supplanted by stark electric guitar, glockenspiel and eerie ambient tones. But it's not as effective in conveying the song's meaning as, say, the simple organ and piano setting for the theological musings of "God, I Have So Many Things To Tell You", or the wistful strings and keyboards underscoring the apprehension of "Very Careless People". The latter is a delicately-wrought piece in which Teitur ruefully admits, "She's got a right to mess up her life – who am I to deny her, or inspire her?"
"I am in a place in my life where I need to make something that is safe, comfortable and more effortless," explains Teitur, justifying his abandonment of the complex arrangements of previous recordings, and his new-found interest in direct, classic songcraft. "I've learned that you become the music you write – and it sucks to travel around singing about funerals, death and yourself. Trust me, it does." - The Independent (UK)
Discography
Albums:
Poetry & Aeroplanes (2003) (Universal Records)
Stay under the Stars (2006) (Arlo and Betty Recordings)
Káta Hornið (2007) (Arlo and Betty Recordings)
The Singer (2008) (Arlo and Betty Recordings)
Let the Dog Drive Home (2011) (Arlo and Betty Recordings)
Current singles "Betty Hedges" and "You never leave L.A." at radio around Europe.
Photos
Bio
Look out, the musicians favourite singer-songwriter is coming to a place near you with a new album. Says KT Tunstall: he is the sound of melting ice, haunted woods and beautiful honesty He is Teitur (Tie-tor), a man from the Faroe Islands who turns music into magic beautifully and effortlessly.
In 2002, Teitur was signed by the legendary Doug Morris to Universal Records in the US and in 2003, Teitur released his first album, Poetry & Aeroplanes. Its simple, sincere songs made it a critical hit. He toured the USA and Canada extensively, performed on American chat shows, watched as his songs got snapped up for film soundtracks (My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Aquamarine), and attracted the attention of respected singer-songwriters like Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, KT Tunstall, Ron Sexsmith and John Mayer, all of whom took him on tour. John Mayer said of the album in Esquire Magazine: ..it may be one of the best albums to come around in the last five years... Minor radio hits in the US followed, but a real fanbase developed and the album became a cult hit, and rave reviews for gigs helped grow the story. During this time, he managed to co-write a song on the 4 million selling debut album by Corinne Bailey Rae.
In 2006, unhappy with the label's plans for his future, Teiturs manager broke the contract and he left Universal. His manager then started his own label just for Teitur, and called it Arlo and Betty Recordings (after his 2 classic Gibson guitars). He released his second album Stay Under The Stars in the same year, a record full of richer writing and bolder characters, which went Gold in Denmark, spawning the huge radio hit, Louis Louis, and established him as a major star in Scandinavia and built his reputation across Continental Europe, with main stage appearances at Roskilde (opening the Festival with Radiohead in 2008), Benicassim, etc. Two Danish Grammies followed. By 2008, he had completed 700 gigs in 20 countries in 4 years, which earned him the reputation of one of the hardest working artists on the road.
In 2007, Teitur fulfilled a lifetime ambition by releasing an album in his mother tongue, Kata Hornid, before beginning work in late that year on The Singer, recorded in a Swedish Princesses house in Gotland, released in 2008 in Europe and early 2009 in the UK, his first album to be issued in Britain.
The Singer garnered five star reviews in The Guardian ("deep, viscous stuff that is never less than extraordinary") and The Independent ("a rare beast"), while the Sunday Times praised the singer-songwriter's " wonderfully idiosyncratic talent".
The Singer Included The Girl I Don't Know, with its swaggering Spaghetti Western guitars and dark, mournful horns; and the jaunty Catherine The Waitress, which Radio 2's Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie liked so much they invited Teitur in for a session, helping his reputation grow, and pointing fans towards his series of successful shows across Britain.
Then in October 2009, the UK only release album 'All My Mistakes', a kind of introduction to/best of took us through the last seven years of Teitur's glittering career and revealed the marvellous jewels from his back catalogue. Achieving his second Album of The Week in The Independent, Andy Gill wrote of the album:
..there's more than enough evidence here to bear out Teitur's assertion, in the title-track, that "all my mistakes have become masterpieces".
Teitur continued his career development in many ways, producing and writing for a major French artist, Nolwenn; co-writing and performing with American Contemporary film musician Nico Muhly (who scored the film The Reader), writing for other artists and all the time continued writing songs for his next album.
During 2010, Teitur recorded his stunning new album Let the Dog drive home in Denmark and mixed it in Norway, an album which combines the quality of songs from his first album, with the broad appeal of his second, and some of the coolness of the third, The Singer.
In the meantime, Seal heard Teiturs song You Get Me and recorded it for his new album, which has recently been released, going top 20 around the world.
Teiturs new album Let The Dog drive home is out in most of Continental Europe (already top 10 in Denmark and charted in Holland) and South Korea and was released in the UK on the 11th April, preceded in the UK by the single, Betty Hedges, and You never leave L.A. in Europe; scheduled as the first single in the US and the rest of the world in the fall. He is currently touring Europe, doing summer Festivals and then more touring in the autumn. Reviews for the album include:
The Independent: 4/5 : "..Teitur's fifth collection of songs soon winds itself inexorably round one's heart, its emotional tendrils taking purchase like clematis scaling a garden wall."
Scottish Sunday Express 4* : "..an album full of simple yet deceptively deep songs"
The Fly : 4/5 : "Music to hold dear"
MusicOMH: " U
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