Silje Nes: Ames Room

Label: Fat Cat

What a lovely and surprising album! The first effort by Norway’s Silje Nes is one of the most impressive debuts we’ve heard in some time. At once mischievous and accomplished, ramshackle and deft, Ames Room has a mix of electronics, birdlike vocals, and persuasive rhythms conjuring inevitable comparisons to labelmates Múm, but Silje’s melodies are less anthemic than insinuating and close-to-the-bone. Silje employs a wide mix of organic and found sounds, various instruments, some homemade or used in out-of-the-ordinary ways, as well as electronics and her own pretty coo; Silje’s home-recorded, try-anything style shows similarities with other autodidacts like Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Tenniscoats or the Pastels. It’s hard to evoke the magic and small-scale beauty of Ames Room: but think Four Tet’s Rounds as reimagined by a band of wood-sprites in the forest early on a dewy morning, with an elfin Vashti Bunyan on vocal duties, and you’ve got an idea. (Jackie)