Ane Brun - 'Changing Of The Seasons' (DetErMine Records) Released 02/02/09

Let’s face it February is a shit month. It's only saving grace is that as the shortest month of the year it's marginally better than January but that’s not saying much; February is a month that’s neither here nor there. But maybe, just maybe, February 2009 will be different... because as I lie here on a cold and unforgiving pillow, yearning for St David's Day while staring longingly at a Polaroid of last years Daffodil’s, I’m suddenly enveloped by the glow of Ane Brun and maybe, just maybe, she can make everything OK.

Or maybe it’s me that has to comfort her… after all, the 32-year-old Norwegian is a singer-songwriter and sweeping statements aside, you know what that means. That’s right, her third studio album ‘Changing Of The Seasons’ has the majority of attributes normally associated with female singer-songwriters… love, loss, hope, loneliness… the usual. But with Brun it’s different, with Brun it's OK, with Brun you actually care and it’s easy to see why. Grounding the album in the seductively organic vocals of ‘The Treehouse Song’ her Nordic roots are thinly veiled with pan-pacific anonymity, which, more than anything, makes you want to give the poor girl a hug. But more than that, she’s believable and so is her album as a body of work that refuses to entertain self-serving melancholic lament.

Sustaining fifteen tracks of emotive honesty, this is only the tip of her intrinsically appealing iceberg. Dulcetly Scandinavian, ‘The Fall’, ‘The Puzzle’ and ‘My Star’ are as inclusive as they are understated. Whispered direct to your ear from the warmth of a Sunday morning duvet, ‘10 Seconds’ epitomises the clarity of her vocal charm, while the title track, a delicately assembled narrative, hints at oxymoronic brilliance, without falling back on a cushion of empowered baggage. Cut through the obvious appeal and you’ll find yet more to embrace; her personally driven storytelling promotes empathy not sympathy through 'Round Table Conference', the economical instrumentation of ‘Lullaby For Gown-Ups’ and 'Don't Leave' cut solitary windswept figures and the inwardly optimistic ‘Raise My Head’, operatic ‘Armour’ and 'Linger With Pleasure' gracefully compliment cerebrally elegant strings. Add to this two bonus tracks including a delicious cover of Cyndi Lauper's 'True Colours' and ‘Changing Of The Seasons’ is an album you can’t help but fall in love with.

Singer-songwriters come and go but Ane Brun’s simplistic approach to contemporary folk, direct, fragile storytelling and minimalistically spacious arrangements, demands and deserves attention, ensuring her standing in an otherwise transient crowd.