Earthbound

I bought a secondhand car with a six-CD player but Led Zeppelin Remasters is only two discs: what to choose for the other four? To start I picked up a secondhand copy of Lisa Ekdahl's Back to Earth (1998) with the Peter Nordahl Trio -- quite possibly the exact same one that I'd sold to the store after listening to it in 1999 and deciding that I didn't like it at all. Plus ça change and all that.

When I first heard Back To Earth I found it clockwork but now, 14 years later I like it: I find it clockwork. I remembered her cover of 'Now Or Never' that hits like espresso but forgotten her charming version of Cole Porter's 'Laziest Girl In Town'. And 'Tea for Two', 'I Get a Kick Out of You' and 'Night and Day.' It's like being in a five-star lobby that never closes.

Ekdahl is Swedish, the daughter of a nuclear physicist and a kindergarten teacher. She takes after both parents: her voice is perfect and innocent, precise and untroubled. The band whirl around her like electrons while she glows at the center, neither positive nor negative, on time and in key.

Critics are divided on Lisa Ekdahl, most of them rating her as not very good. Her voice is one you either love or hate, and she makes no excuses for it. As she told Time Out Hong Kong:

I'm aware that I have a tiny voice, and I try to do the best with what I have. So I accept my voice and try not to make it bigger than what it is, because, for me personally, I love when someone naturally has a big beautiful voice, but I don't think it's so interesting when someone with a not very big voice tries to make it sound big. Another thing is that when I record, I'm aware that my voice is tiny, so I want to make a lot of space around my voice, so for me it's very important to work with musicians who naturally leave a lot of space.