People are Strange

text

This has taken some time to get round to, but the spur has been my colleague Simon Hopkins, quoting bland, and shallow opinions of this album from several deliberately stupid reviews in the print media. On the surface, one could be forgiven for an immediate rejection; the opening song, a cover of Rod Stewart's Sailing seems like commercial suicide, but deep below one can discover that this combination of cover versions and originals is deeply personal to Ms Nordenstam and touching to the keen listener. Whilst her last album, Dynamite, veered towards guitar-based, musicianly mainstream-ness after two albums of jazz-influenced fragility, People Are Strange takes a step towards the nether regions of rock, as evidenced on the remixes of her Doors cover (the title track, of course) by UNKLE and Techno Animal. This new, dare I say it, post-rock, even lo-fi slant, mixed with Stina's close-miked, pained voice and discreet chamber orchestra is truly magical. It's been said that these covers add nothing to the originals; unbelievable. She has brought out entirely new meaning in every song. From a close look at the sleevenotes, it's clear that the songs have been chosen with great care; the lyrics themselves, with their settings transformed are reshaped almost beyond recognition. Prince's Purple Rain, stripped of its glorious pop-rock production, is revealed as the paean to lost friendship it always was. The album's title track is chosen well - it's easily the album's most tellingly personal, showing an artist with an entirely unique, if evidently distorted world-view. The overall tone of the album is one of minimalism, yet there's a huge amount of detail in there too. Fragments of location recordings - a street scene, a bare room with an old honky-tonk piano - drift in and out of the mix, mysteriously. Top marks to the producer. It's inevitably difficult to enter this private world; an outsider unprepared to work might simply view the whole thing as stupid. But whether you find it touchingly funny or seriously touching, this album is a winner.