A Killer For That Ache

27 year old norwegian singer and songwriter hilde marie kjersem was born and brought up in the northwest coastal town of lesund, with seven brothers and sisters and a father with a passion for science fiction and kenny rogers. she was only 10 when she knew she wanted to write music and sing, and by the time she turned 14 she had done her first gigs. like many of her young contemporaries in norway she has studied at the music conservatory. she has released two albums, the first %u201dred shoes diary%u201d (2004) with her now disbanded tub quartet and %u201dtwelve oclock tales%u201d (2005), a duo album of standards with jazz guitarist jon eberson. the last couple of years she has worked on %u201da killer for that ache%u201d, the first proper album under her own name. far from being a jazz album or your typical melancholy nordic singer songwriter album, kjersem names some inspirations to be david lynch, roger rabbit, finn graff (legendary norwegian newspaper illustrator), danny elfman, robert wyatt, jos saramago, kate bush and tim burton. with her present band, including shining mainman jrgen munkeby, she has delivered some stunning concerts this year that have been extremely well received in the norwegian press. %u201da killer for that ache%u201d can be called a concept album of sorts, in the way that kjersem sets out to comment elements of the media by stepping into various disguises and characters using comments, facts, lies, repetitions, assumptions, exaggerations, humour, irony and absurd observations on things that might have happened, never happened and never will. not surprisingly, the result is an eclectic selection of songs that we dont even want to try to describe. lets just say its pop music with a twist, quite a few twists come to think of it, making it a dramatic, beautiful, mysterious, seductive, intricate and quite simply different sounding and fascinating musical ride