Interview with Lena Anderssen: ‘An album is an eclectic journey, it’s like speaking a different language’

Faroese-Canadian folky pop rock singer Lena Anderssen has released ‘Aimee’, the second single from her upcoming sixth album today (6 November), a gorgeous, reflective song with a massive, hooky chorus about being in limbo.

‘It’s not based on a specific Aimee that I know but I’m sure there’s a bit of Aimee in everyone,’ Anderssen said. ‘It’s about someone who’s torn between hope and fear, waiting for the perfect moment that never arrives, it’s like she’s in limbo. I’m pretty sure it’s a feeling that most of us can relate to. As for the song itself, it was written many years ago and felt right for this album. So I guess music doesn’t have an expiry date.’

The sense of waiting is beautifully captured by the lyrics: ‘She’s waiting for whenever or whether, she’s caught between the never and now, she’s standing on the edge of something better, still she feels the weight on her shoulder. The sun is out but the winds are colder.’

‘I already had ‘State of the Land’ and I’d always imagined it with a male vocal’

In August, she released a track, ‘State of the Land’, with Austin, Texas-based singer, Matt The Electrician, which came about in an extremely serendipitous way. ‘We hadn’t worked together before but my booker in Denmark asked if Matt could come and stay with us (on the Faroe Islands) for a couple of days when he was doing his last tour. We didn’t do any songwriting but I already had ‘State of the Land’ and I’d always imagined it with a male vocal, I wanted a North American sound so I asked him if he’d sing on this song, so he did that in our studio and I’m so happy with how it turned out.’

As the song goes: ‘Oh conversations in the air and the words come flying from everywhere and you talk about money and the state of the land, why don’t you ask me ask me how I am? Why don’t you ask me ask me how I am?’

The album, which will come out on 19 March 2021, was actually recorded in Los Angeles in 2018 with the legendary English recording engineer, Geoff Emerick, who died shortly afterwards, and who is best known for his work with The Beatles on albums such as Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road.

Anderssen, who used to split her time between Canada and the Faroes, but has been based in the Faroes for the past few years, will release her third single from the album in January, although she says as they’re still finishing off songs, she has yet to decide which one it will be. ‘At home in the Faroes, we add in extra backing, electric guitars and extra overdubs that we didn’t get to do in the States,’ she said. ‘One song ‘Good To Be Kind’ needed a harmonica and we found a great Swedish harmonica player, Filip Jers, online. We sent him the session files and he laid down the harmonica and sent back a few tracks, and we picked the bits that we liked the most. (Her partner, Niclas Johannesen, is a producer and guitarist.)’

‘My lyrics are more or less autobiographical’

She doesn’t have a favourite song on the new album: ‘When you work with a song, you think this is it,’ she laughed. ‘All of my lyrics are more or less autobiographical. Although Aimee’s not, there’s still a chunk of me in there. When I write something that I am going to sing myself, it’s important to write what I know and be able to relate to it as a singer.’

Her first album, Long Distance, came out in 1998 and she acknowledges that her musical direction has developed since then: ‘As an artist, you tend to think that where you are now is the best,’ she said. ‘When I look back at my first album, I don’t want to undermine my first flight, but I think maybe there are some things that I have been more concrete about since, maybe because in retrospect it’s easier to frame things compared to when you’re in the midst of it. Also, when you’re at the beginning of a journey, there’s an element of naivety that might serve you well in the creative process. You want to keep the naivety to a certain extent, but at the same time you can’t undo what you learn along the way. So that is a constant wrestle.’

‘It’s a song about letting yourself miss or long for something’

Anderssen’s voice has drawn comparisons with Natalie Merchant’s, the frontwoman of 10,000 Maniacs, and it is easy to see why, particularly on tracks such as ‘To Be With You Again’ (2018). Her immense voice exudes depth, flexibility, honesty and vulnerability in much the same way that Merchant’s does. When I tell her this, she says: ‘I love her! I got into her later on, in my 20s, but I take that as a huge compliment.’ She describes the song as ‘basically written about when you lose something – a person or a place in time’.

‘You can’t go back to it,’ she said. ‘It’s a song about letting yourself miss or long for something, the longing lets you be there again. I have lived this long distance life where I’m always missing someone or something, so it resonates with me.’

Lockdown was tough for her initially. ‘Later on, I liked the idea of rolling up my sleeves and making the best of it and finding new ways to be creative. One of the beautiful things about the human spirit is its ability to adapt. We got some new songs written and dug deep into the songs we wanted to finish for the album.’

It helps that the Faroes have a long musical history, according to Anderssen. ‘This place is incredible when you think of the population (just under 53,000). At least one in five people play music, I think, and it’s like the Faroe Islands is a nation of singers. Everybody sings here. There’s so much flourishing, musically. A lot of artists here dabble in all genres, I like it when they sing in Faroese.’

Growing up, Anderssen listened to a lot of Neil Young, The Carpenters, basically everything from punk rock to classical music, playing classical guitar as a child. If she could tour with anyone, she’d go for Tom Petty: ‘What it is for me is that I can so closely relate to his emotions,’ she said. ‘It’s unfiltered from the heart, maybe because I can hear a troubled soul. That would be my number one. I’d also like to tour with Neil Young – and he’s Canadian!’

Anderssen was born in the Faroe Islands, her mother is Faroese and her father a Norwegian Canadian. She moved to Canada at the age of three and together with her family lived in places like Vancouver, Thunder Bay, Port Dover and Montreal. When she was nearly seventeen her parents split up and she went with her mother and siblings back to the Faroe Islands to live. A year later, she travelled back to the west coast of Canada, feeling torn between which side of the Atlantic she should call home.

‘I’m a little bit of everywhere I’ve been’

We chat about living in lots of different countries, which we have both done, and how that affects your perception of your surroundings and expectations: ‘I have had a hard time picking somewhere to live,’ she said. ‘My parents moved practically every other year in Canada, I was changing schools a lot. The more you move, the less you fit in anywhere. I’m a little bit of everywhere I’ve been.’

And the more you move and the greater the number of languages you pick up along the way, the more versions of yourself there are that emerge: ‘When we go on tour in Denmark, I can speak some Danish,’ she said. ‘You are yourself but you’re a different version of yourself in different languages, aren’t you?’ I tell her that I completely agree and that some parts of your personality come through more in some languages than others and she gets very animated and makes the comparison to songwriting: ‘An album is an eclectic journey, it’s like speaking a different language because you’re a different version of yourself through the songs.’