Following on from a couple of busy London performances in 2015 and the announcement of her first full length record Hold On Dreamer, Frøkedal is taking to the road with her band Familien for a run of European dates which will see the singer perform four UK gigs including one at Manchester’s The Castle before heading out on tour of Germany, Norway and Denmark.
Stripping arrangements to their bare bones, Frøkedal’s taste for sparse production carries through to the live performance – her band Familien (Norwegian for Family) fill the stage with delicate strings, percussion and harmonies that cocoon Frøkedal’s electric guitar and timeless sounding songs. It’s all about beauty in simplicity and great musicianship.
Having fronted successful Norwegian outfits Harrys Gym and Grammy-nominated I Was A King (who count Sufjan Stevens, Robyn Hitchcock and Norman Blake among past collaborators), Frøkedal approached her solo descent differently, almost defiantly. “Almost everything I’d done in the past I tried to avoid,” she says. “Harrys Gym had a huge pop sound with lots of instruments, so the new songs had to be simple. I wanted a stripped-down sound that was still dynamic.
“Because everyone has a computer these days, there’s no limit to how many times you can multi-track. I’m sick of that. Big, busy songs don’t touch me emotionally anymore. I hoped to go the other way – to remove as much as I could and be left with a beating heart.”
The end result is Hold On Dreamer – a worthy successor to Frøkedal’s debut EP of September, I See You, which was critically praised.
The album Hold On Dream is set to be released on 26 February, just days before her show at The Castle.
Frøkedal performs at Manchester’s The Castle on 28 February.
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image of Frokedal courtesy RepublicMedia
