You are soooooooooooo Awesome! You are an Amazing
singer with a Brilliant voice. I love your music
sooooooooo much. The Dream That I Keep is a Great
song...you put a smile on my face:) I'm soooooo
excited about your music. You have a ton of
talent,you will be a SuperStar. I can’t wait for your
future projects. Keep up the Brilliant work...I will
always be a fan of yours! You are an Amazing artist too. 
I love your drawings, and paintings:)
                            Read more...
                        

                            
Nesrin Sen – Plenty Coloured Bird
Nesrin Sen [lyrics, composition, acoustic guitars, vocals]
Mathias Garnås [bass] – Tobias Tagesson [drums] – Andreas Ekstedt [percussion, drums] – Mikael Chesta [piano] – Daniel Möller [piano] – Pietu Kaipainen [electric guitar] – Jerker Eklund [additional acoustic guitar on track 8] – Linda Löfstrand [saxophone] – Oscar Lindblom [trumpet] – Sarah Carlsson [viola] – Kristoffer Arvidsson [cello] – Julia Dagerfelt [violin]

Arrangements by Nesrin Sen, except strings and horns by Daniel Möller.

Nesrin Productions


The quotes from Nesrin Sen’s lyrics that I use below are not at all complete (except when indicated), but just compelling fragments from her songs.

Nesrin Sen is a plenty colored bird herself. That is my experience after having met her for an interview in a Stockholm café. She is flowing over with impressions, ideas, ventures – and songs… while shifting emotions pass across her face like cloud shadows. Some of her songs are gathered on this CD, the second of her two albums, which was released early 2006.

It is somewhat of a wonder how this CD came about, but you should read that story in the interview, published elsewhere at Sonoloco. The fact is that the CD did manifest itself, and that it is bursting at it’s edges with talent and short stories of filmic properties – because Nesrin’s texts are often very visual to their nature; visual and permeated with the melancholy of the passing moment, the sometimes rough texts carried lightly like a summer’s breeze through your conscience; a rustling of leaves, the passing of our lives, moment to moment, until we’re just somebody else’s memories, growing fainter as the sediment of time covers them more and more.

Track 1: Here and Now.

This is such a catchy tune, with such a simple text, which none the less carries you away, away, away on the wind and brings you to a place of compassion and hope, for as long as the voice carries and quite a bit into the silence thereafter, in your mind. I listened a lot to this song on my train-ride to go se Nesrin for the interview, and I didn’t loose the melody and those lofty summer wind words for a long time.

This song shows the richness that may lie in simplicity. A true artist can be simple, whereas one that calculates finesse could never reach this summer sky freshness, this dewdrop clarity of mind and intent.

Nesrin gets real close, right in your face. Her voice breathes up close; it’s amazing, the closeness you feel. I like it that way. I don’t appreciate a leading voice lost in arrangements, which is all too common in overly produced material. Nesrin is so close she can’t hide anything. She rubs shoulders with you in the subway, she reaches out and grabs your hair; draws you in ever closer and sings into your mouth She is here, and she’s now!. 

“When I run free there's no one left behind the wheel.
When I run free there's hope and faith in the wind.
And the rain washes the pain away, away, away, away, away”

The song starts with just this incredibly close voice, a cappella like an old wooden farm fence through the chill of a spring evening, except for a cautious acoustic guitar that chirps the introvert glass of a blackbird – until the orchestra explodes into the driving force of the main theme, with just a fraction of a second’s warning in the drummer’s swelling high-hat, hitting like a mighty wave out of the darkness!

This initial song on Plenty Coloured Bird is hit material for sure. I keep spinning it over and over, and like all good art it opens something new, yet recognizable, to you; an adventure in your own forebodings, your silvery premonitions!

“When I run free there's no one left behind the wheel.
When I run free there's hope and faith in the wind”

Track 2: Called the Murderer Song

Like the title suggests, this song begins – and continues – on a serious, ominous and helpless note. It is like it is, for a number of crazy, fucked-up reasons, and this song is the result. The melody marches on in a slow, steady relentlessness, like fate and a creeping illness hidden deep in your body.

“I am lost, with no hope and I'm pissed off.
Don't know what I am going to do with you.

I really loved you baby, but I couldn't stand my jealous soul.
So, that's why I prefer to see you dead.

I just do what everybody else does; throw hate on each other.
The only difference is, that I'm a murderer”

Nesrin brings on hard feelings, tough circumstances and the clear-sighted confusion that shines hard like starlight through the eyes of a gentle murderer! Poisonous pleasure, valiant venomousness – and a confession thrown in like a handkerchief onto a deserted stage.

Track 3: As the Sun Drifts

A ballad, blessed – with a bitter-sweet flavor of the loss that is inevitable, and what we can do to sweeten our moment on Earth…

As the sun drifts through the oceans.
As the sun goes old, all that comes will go,
hard to face it.
As the song goes on we are history.

As the song goes on we are history.
As we climb the trees.
O, my love, have you ever thought about
the wind, the trees, the rain,
the earth, the sun again, the stars and peace.

Again, Nesrin is so close, her long locks around my breath in the stereo image, her voice comforting as the strings dance like rays of sunlight through the trees, a meadow opening: Nesrin Sen a dark-haired troll on a moss-covered ice-age rock in the old forest: her voice gently drifting in a reminder of beauty, her guitar emitting glittering points of reference in this vast existence.

I often listen to William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices when I go to sleep at night, for it comforts me and brings consolation to my weariness (because many things are hard to face!) – but I could as well hear Nesrin Sen’s As the Sun Drifts, the same way, as I drift into sleep and entrust myself to the benevolence of cosmic forces. Thank you, Nesrin!

Track 4: Angel/Devil and I

This comes on like a hesitating but building blues melody, seemingly directed at some sonofabitch best friend (?) that has mistreated the singer lady. As the blues grows stronger it becomes more decisive and finally completely over-powering in its angry fix of death wishes and 
The piano rolls Jelly Roll Mortonish as the bass staggers heavily forth. The musicians all set their feet down hard here. There is no hesitation as the song develops.

No sign, from the devil that sent me a postcard.
I hope he's busy, 'cause I don't have time with him.
You son of a bitch!
I hope you die soon,
my closest friend

Track 5: If You Were Awake

This is one of the longer entries, exceeding six minutes. Nesrin picks her acoustic guitar in a fairly long, summer-shiny Donovan Leitch-like intro (not unlike what’s heard in his Summer Day Reflection Song, Jersey Thursday or Belated Forgiveness Plea).
As her voice enters it does so in a masterly and fragile beauty that is bound to charm anyone that has loved or lost, for sure.

Her melody is incredibly varied. She seems to change mode every half sentence, and then she completely changes tempo too. Extremely intriguing, and… beautiful!

My old man analogies tread from Donovan Leitch to the Incredible String Band to some more recent singers, but Nesrin is her own, and she moves in and out of styles here, too, from the old Anglo-Saxon ballad to bent bar blue note jazz reverences! She’s gotten so much into this melody that those six minutes suddenly seem very short. This is a true highlight of this album, albeit among others! It has a dancing, soaring Joni Mitchell complexity! That’s about the highest praise I can raise!

“All the vital things, you know, have a heart and have a soul
worth much, much, much, much more than gold.
I thought everybody knew, but hey, wake up!
I'm alive, I'm alive and I will always be”

Track 6: Plenty Coloured Bird

So, the title song!

Nesrin breaks into new realms of excellence here, in the most compelling of songs, the melody spiraling like a slow whirlwind across the West Texan plains.

“I have colours that you can't even see.
It is time to hear the wind blowing.
It is time to hear my heart beating.
It is almost like I ain't here”

In the back of my mind I hear a faint recollection of an earlier – much earlier – voice, and after some mind searching I realize I’m thinking of a Joan Baez song from the 1970s, called Children of Darkness. I’m pretty certain Nesrin never heard that issue, which was rare even when it was released, and Nesrin’s song is by no means any kind of duplicate, in melody or text – but the slowly pulsating, whirling, swinging melody (like a girl in my childhood or in my conception of childhood, swinging on her swing under an old oak tree) inherits that same fairytale magic, that notion of something greater and more important in our lives than is readily available to us through our known senses.

The instruments on this track – acoustic and electric guitar, bass, a very restrained percussion and an even more withheld piano – provide a perfect, lucid realm in which Nesrin’s voice chimes like a transparent church bell.

Track 7: Monster Humminghum

Perhaps this is the one track on the CD that I don’t feel all that strongly for, musically. However, it’s a great song apart from that, i.e., the idea, the text, the notion of a monster within, which absolutely resides there; how true!

The music is sort of a circus or children’s song kind of set-up, not unlike some of the dusty old fairground stuff that you could hear from Melanie in New York State 1970s or why not Mora Träsk in the Swedish 80s and 90s! Shouldn’t forget the blessed New York Jew boy Shel Silverstein either; timeless! This is really his turf. Just think of songs like The Slitheridee Has Crawled Out Of The Sea, You May Catch Everybody But You Won’t Catch Me, You May Catch All The Others But You Wo…!

A special nod to the pianist for his finishing touch right at the conclusion: perfect!

It’s a typical Nesrin Sen text too, in that it plays with identities and words, in a most humorous and also discerning way, always revealing something of human nature in a nonsense kind of frivolity. Read for yourselves; I submit the whole text this time:

There's this shell.
Inside this shell there's a monster, and it's bad.
It's been sleeping for years and years.

And inside this hum there is a humminghum,
and she hums to anyone she wants to hum.
Shouldn't wake her, shouldn't wake her.

There's a monster loose in the city tonight.
There's a monster loose in the city tonight.
And they scream and shout at the monster,
but the monster doesn't understand.
And they scream and shout at the monster,
but the monster couldn't care less, it is all useless.

There is a humminghum in this town
There is a humminghum in this town
And inside this hum there's a humminghum,
and she hums to anyone she wants to.
Hum! 

Track 8: A Simple Tune

Now for my very special favorite on this album bursting with favorites and first choices; A Simple Tune, or, as you might also call it after listening: Not A Love Song.

Not only is it delicate and inventive musically, but it also sports this special Nesrin Sen textual quality, where something is happening, changing in the story as the song develops, in an unexpected way, so that this song that isn’t a love song really becomes a love song; one of the best!

The text begins:

This is not a love song; it's just a simple tune.
If you're not around me, 
why does your heart feel so close to me? 
This is not a love song, 
then why does my heart feel so sore? 

Somewhere down the middle of the song Nesrin says:

You're the man of my dreams; you're the love and the light. 
You're the stars and the sky; you are the sea and the ocean in me. 
You're the earth and the universe, 
but there's nothing as big as you and me, 
and I love you, never told you, but I will. 

In the end… well, then it really is a love song, and she has told him:

You're the man of my dreams; you're the love and the light. 
You're the stars and the sky; you are the sea and the ocean in me. 
You're the earth and the universe, 
but there's nothing as big as you and me, 
and I love you, never told you, now I have.

Magnificent! She begins by stating something that obviously isn’t true, trying to hide it from herself, but in the end life itself has convinced her, as if her own words, her own song, has convinced her along the way. Wonderful, precisely the way this mysterious life works!

Furthermore, I believe this is one of the songs that should make it into the charts of popular, contemporary music, because it has all of those qualities that are needed for that, like a catchy tune, a compelling refrain, and a kind of moral of a story. It doesn’t make it less appealing that the tune also has Nesrin’s special story-telling quality and her quirky, tricky signature of how the story turns around, veers off and ends up where you wouldn’t expect it! This IS a love song, yes!

Nesrin’s voice is so natural here that it becomes the environment; it becomes the incense I’m burning, the fingers that tap along across the computer keyboard as I write this. I like to be engulfed this way!

Track 9: Ticking Places

Nesrin gets a world of feelings into these short phrases! This time it seems like the music isn’t even necessary; that this is a poem, a text that can just be read, or recited by an inner voice. It feels like Nesrin sings this because she is a singer, but that she wouldn’t have to, to make people hear these words – because they’re universal, recognizable for anyone anywhere. Still the text is important to express, because we all need to take a hard look at ourselves, understand and forgive ourselves, over and over.

Nesrin sculptures the text with the melody; the instruments emerging like a supporting structure or like scaffolding around a building being constructed. I can see Nesrin collecting her words and her notes for the structure which climbs up out of the maze of the City of Man until the view is clear all around, until she can say: “I can love again”.

Sublime!

Once again I feel I must submit the whole text:

“Every time I hear your name my heart just falls apart.
Every day and every hour, everywhere I go.
I don't think I can go on without your heartbeat next to mine. 
My heart has lost all powers.
This is a new situation I don't want to be in.
When the rain falls down it makes me feel unwound.
It makes me feel untroubled untroubled.
My heart regained all powers; I can love again.
Every day and every hour everywhere I go,
I am so happy I could scream I love you.
Even if I don't know you, even if you don't deserve it.
Even if I'm not perfect, I never aim to hurt anyone.
But I can love again” 

Track 10: Sundrops and Rain

The concluding song on the Plenty Coloured Bird album is a relaxed meditation on love and it’s careful considerations for the possible merger in this world of the I and the Thou:

“All we need is a little time to find our selves in each other, sometimes”

The melody is as varied as ever, beginning with withheld talk-singing while a considerate percussion rustles like metal leaves in the background. The full force of the orchestra – brass and all – kicks in regularly, though:

Give me sweet honey, give me, give me sweet honey.
Give me, give me, give me sweet honey, give me sweet honey

I leave it at that, having listened carefully and with my senses wide open to this album which I can only call sublime, excellent – permeated with the integrity and beautiful talent of a completely original artist: Nesrin Sen.

/Ingvar Loco Nordin
                            Read more...
                        

                            
No one can move as gracefully between styles as Nesrin, she masters them all.
It's always interesting when you find a second album that can live up to all that the first one promised. This album has everything you loved from the first one, but also shows new qualities in an artist that just won't cease to amaze.
The only drawback is that the experience ends to quickly.
                            Read more...
                        

                            
Sounding very much like Natalie Merchant, but with her own styles. Great Job! Great Songs!
                            Read more...