Ida Wenøe - Undersea (2023) Hi-Res

Written solitude on the Jutland coast, with just the ocean for company, the Danish Singer and Songwriter Ida Wenøe describes her third album as “about all those emotions your try to bury deep, that always find their way to the surface whether you like it or not”. The shifting nature of the ocean, at times calm, at others wild and dangerous, informs the songs, her gentle Americana-flavoured folk noir augmented with contributions from Scottish players Hal Parfitt-Murray on strings and Samantha Whates on flute and backing vocals.

A return to the hushed intimacy of her debut, the opening, Not Here, begins with her “Lying in the bed right now trying to figure out/Why I won’t ever get up and play/When the day breaks”, capturing the environment in which it was penned (“Windows they are my escape/Windows they are my fence”). That sense of place carries over into the no less delicate plucked, flute-brushed With The Wind (“I leave my burdened heart a while for to catch my breath/In the curves of every corner of the dunes and the wonky trees/the breeze bringing in the salty sea/finding peace/if only for a moment”), from whence the album title comes and with the unexpected very English exclamation “jolly gee” to its declaration that “love is never easy/wild it grows/never to be held down”.

There’s a jauntier rhythm to Halfway Nowhere with its desire to escape the clutter of life (“Has it always been this crowded?/There’s no space for thinking/There’s no black no white/ Only in between/Shades of dark and light”) as graced by strings she looks “To see things – a bit clearer”, inviting “come let’s find the way to our house…Come away with me/I won’t ask again/It’s a one-time thing”.

Past comparisons have included Jane Siberry and Suzanne Vega, and Whates on harmonies and a fiddle solo from Parfitt-Murray; you can hear their echoes on the folky strummed The Lighthouse/Bay of Woe where the water’s wilder nature surfaces (“vast is the ocean/Smashing all is in motion/Water eating the shore and always hungry for more”) where coastal erosion (“day after day/Sand drifts swallowed the lighthouse/Don’t go, people they shouted/We want more of the lighthouse”) serves a clearly metaphorical purpose.

Traditional folk colours shade Mourning Time, another airily sung reflection on the tides of love (“I never knew a thing about love/I am a fantasist/Shadow I welcome you to leave me tonight/I think I’ll be fine own this time”), returning to the search for calm in Don’t You Grow Weary (“I tend to go looking at water/When I need some peace in my heart/I like to go looking at something/That does what it does cause it does”) as well as that there is more beyond our personal, limited horizons (“I tend to go looking at skylines/When I need to see there is more/The body is filled with restriction/But out there the mind can be free”), a snatch of fiddle and brief guitar notes punctuating the otherwise unaccompanied delivery.

What feels like emotional distress and perhaps even depression (“Islands seem like giants rising from below the deep dark waters”) underpin the minimal circling notes of Pretend as she muses “Why do I always pretend that I am fine/I keep keeping on”, in the self-embraced isolation (“In my solitude/Eyes turning to dots/When you ask how I feel/I don’t know what is real”).

Relationship uncertainty haunts the hushedly fingerpicked Curtains (“What’s on your mind, are we the kind that root or are we drifting…The stage is empty and we’re the act/There’s nothing written, and nothing said/It might be time”) with its hints of Paul Simon and lyric mention of “Young and Joni and Fleetwood”, but here there’s positivity to be found (“Your honesty has taken me for better and for worse/So I lean in, and close your lips there’s too much talking/The dance begins and we swing and you say we have potential/I agree ironically though I really want to”).

That builds further on the flute adorned, fingerpicked Shapeshifting, sitting at sunset on the pebble beach as she sings, “We made it me and you/The ocean is rising/I’ve been sharing many colours with you/You are my kind”, speaking of environmental shifts (“If this is human kind we’re running out of time”) and addressing the ocean directly in “this race is young and dumb/People all want a chunk/You will outlive us… Crystal water come clear/Cover up my soul/If I last till the end/Let me be reborn”.

She brings the curtain down with the fiddle-accompanied Celtic-tinged Walking Mantra, ending back on the shore with echoes of early Joni, on a note of change and embracing who you are in “I am walking towards something I am…I did something I did”.

An album to be experienced in tranquillity, a musical Reiki for the soul that offers a view of life that, like the ocean, can be often filled with mystery and darkness, but “when the light hits its surface, it can be the most golden thing existing”. Immerse yourself.

Ida on her latest single and video ‘Don’t You Grow Weary’:

“This was a cathartic song for me to write. I had all the songs I needed for the album and went for a final trip to the coast to record the last bits and pieces. Sitting there, looking at the sea from my little cottage sanctuary, it occurred to me that the ocean and surrounding nature had been my faithful companions through the whole process: shaking me up when I needed it; bringing wordless poetry from all corners of the world to my humble little corner … Comforting me when the feeling of meaninglessness was sneaking up on me, blowing me over and away, but always reminding me there’s something bigger than me out there, something completely beyond my control. I’d like the song to remind us to look outwards instead of inwards. Out there on the horizon there’s something bigger than us, forcing us to humble ourselves. That humbling feeling is healthy, I think, and can even be healing.”