In his native Denmark, Troels Abrahamsen has achieved success as part of the electro-rock band VETO but here he charts a very different course with a solo work in which he boldly pares things down to the basics of voice and piano.
With an album containing 14 tracks and a playing time of just 34 minutes; these are chamber pop pieces reduced to the length of punk rock tunes.
The result is a memorable and movingly personal album that touches on universal themes of life and, above all, death. The final track (Stripped) could even be read as a man publicly baring his soul through lines like "Strip me of my system, of all of my beliefs".
An awareness of his /our mortality informs all the songs and while the cycle is in part inspired by the Nordic psalm tradition it is resolutely secular in nature.
The infinite possibilities of life are set against the sobering recognition that our time this side of the grave is short. His unsentimental, existential stance is overtly set out in Full Of Knots when he sings "To simply exist is better than not being here", a sentiment similar to that of British writer, artist and poet Mervyn Peake who wrote "To live at all is miracle enough".
In this, and throughout, Abrahamsen's voice is resonant and full of a theatrical tension. Some lines initially sound banal yet in the context seem to carry a profound subtext. In this respect there are certain similarities to Scott Walker; the passion behind the words means that one feels that to take the lyrics at face value would be to miss the true significance. What, for instance, could we read into the observation that "There is no sight like that of an airplane taking off from the ground it was built on" on Controlled Experiments
In The Explanatory Gap, the human condition is likened to that of athletes grouped together on a running track yet always pursuing goals in isolation ("we can touch but never blend"). Life Is A Liquid uses a different metaphor but the message is the same, our lives flow down separate routes towards the future and the truth - "One wakes you in the morning, the other in the night".
On Peers he identifies himself as "a pale Caucasian male" as if to offset any notion that these reflections are presented from a privileged perspective. In this regard he is implicitly stating that his purpose here is to elicit empathy not sympathy.
This comes across most movingly on Going Under, a devastating song that strikes home in much the same way as Antony & The Johnsons' 'Hope There's Someone'. "I am no master, I am no king" he declares before delivering the chilling refrain: "I know where I am going, I'm going under".
The sparseness of the arrangements and the brevity of the songs mean that on first hearing, the material seems to consist merely of unfinished sketches. Yet, although any one of the tunes could easily have been extended or given a full blown orchestrated backing, Abrahamsen is well aware of the effect he wants to create. The pathos lies in the starkness and simplicity.
