Ane Brun: A Temporary Dive

Ane Brun
A Temporary Dive
V2

She's one of our people, Ane Brun is, or at least she sounds like it. Just listen to the breadth and depth of the "oooohhhh" on the fourth track of her second album, A Temporary Dive. "My lover will gooooooohhhh," she warbles, which makes you want to interject: You better close your mouth and finish that vowel before your man is out the door and halfway to his Saab. Beyond the slapstick-cum-Slap Shot accent, Brun is not Minnesotan in any real sense: The 28-year-old is Norwegian and lives in Sweden (a good thing for the purposes of that last sentence, as I can't think of any Norwegian auto manufacturers). In fact, the folksy fingerpicking and abstractly confessional lyrics place her music closer to whatever misty British glade hosted the 1976 Fairport Convention. (I like to imagine that Margaret Thatcher stole the podium at the 1980 Fairport Convention.)

Brun, it should be said, is no dippy elf-talker, although she does portray her lover as a horse (or her horse as a lover) on "The Fight Song." "And I will mount you," she trills over a spare campfire guitar, "press my knees on both sides/and you will let me/let me ride." Hard to tell if Brun has a sense of humor; her fondness for the occasional tuba solo and triangle track makes me think she does. I know I'd enjoy a good laugh if my girlfriend told me she "won't leave [me] galloping in [her] national park." How about just a trot, then?