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Reviews

Haakon Ellingsen — Every Day the Weather's Changing
(Ellingsongs ELLING025, 2024, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-01-21

Every Day the Weather's Changing Cover art

It’s been just a little over a year since we reviewed Ellingsen’s previous full length album, Cloudberry Tales, and while the Norwegian singer-songwriter has maintained a fairly regular release schedule going back to  2015’s Orkaner og Fuglesang, most of those have been sung in his native tongue, though they are no less excellent. Ellingsen’s musical background has strong roots in folk music, baroque chamber pop, and the 60s psychedelic sounds of artists like The Beatles, Donovan, The Byrds, and others, as well as groups with a strong reliance on harmony vocals. Those influences still show up regularly in his songcraft, though with each successive album his style becomes more idiosyncratic and original, which brings us up to his latest, Every Day the Weather's Changing. Ellingsen is a true multi-instrumentalist, and although Kyrre Fritzner is credited with production of these twelve tracks, all of the pieces were composed, arranged and performed by Ellingsen in a meticulous process of building them up one layer at a time, using standard instrumentation like piano, keyboards, bass, acoustic and electric guitars, drums as required, and singing — and as I stated in my Cloudberry Tales review, his voice is warm, personal and gentle, a bit reminiscent of Ray Davies. In addition, it’s his selection of less usual instrumentation that goes far to give his songs their unique character: charango, Irish bouzouki, ukulele, oud, banjo, vihuela, and Portuguese twelve string guitar (often called fado guitar). The album title is taken from the chorus lyric in the second song, “Rusty Morning,” a song that offers evidence of his creative use of vocal harmonies. The opener “Oh Butterfly” is a bit more fragile, but no less powerful in many unusual ways, and he’s got a way with lyrics that make all of these songs unforgettable. Other standouts include “The Test Message” and its more upbeat follow-on “The Melody,” with a couple of outstanding guitar solos. ”Fire Engine Man” blends beautiful folk sounds, mandolin, fluid guitars, and flowing harmonies into a special tune like no other, while “Fields of Heather” has a clear Byrds influence in its jangly guitar figure, even through Its slower mid-section. “Look Square in the Eye” is an upbeat number with the best of everything arrangement-wise and engaging harmonies. The gentle closer, “We Will Be Friendly Now,” certainly has its charms as well, a beautiful and touching lyric and arrangements to match. All taken, this is Ellingsen’s most refined and polished effort to date, full of unforgettable melodies and arrangements and intense lyrical beauty.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Haakon Ellingsen

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http://ellingsongs.no

 

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