When I was in college, one of my best friends was a girl named Melody, who was notorious for having highly specific and yet very incongruous musical taste. She liked They Might Be Giants and Weird Al, and that made sense as far as it went, but other than that, almost all she ever listened to was Queen and Clannad (or solo records made by people who used to be in Clannad).
One day, when I was doing nothing of any importance, Melody came down to my room and knocked on the door. “I checked this out of the public library,” she said, handing me a CD. “It’s pretty good. Do you want to listen to it?”
“Sure,” I said, which was probably what I would have said regardless of what it was. And so, after she had left, I stepped over to the CD player and put in Annbjorg Lien’s rather awkwardly titled Felefeber (Norwegian Fiddle Fantasia).
Felefeber, which was Lien’s first album, is a quiet, thoughtful record. The traditional Hardanger fiddle style in general, and Lien’s approach to it specifically, is much more about tone and texture than it is about fire and flash. You won’t find any blow-the-doors-down Ashley MacIsaac-type solos here. Even the relatively uptempo numbers such as “The Plucked Halling” are a whole lot tamer than someone used to listening to Celtic fiddling would be used to.
Other instruments show up on some of the cuts: mostly acoustic guitars, but occasionally an organ, flutes, a bass, and some kind of percussion. (Precisely what is being played and who is playing it isn’t stated in the uninformative liner notes.) Their parts are performed in a respectful, understated manner, leaving Lien’s fiddle to carry the record.
In the years since I first heard this album, it’s become one of my favorite CDs to put on when I want something introspective. It’s music for quiet Sundays alone, for late nights after everyone else is asleep. I particularly like listening to it during the winter, because it almost begs to be listened to next to a fire with the lights down, preferably with a mug of something warm. Even though it’s purely an instrumental record, Lien’s melodic playing, along with the soft drones inherent in her choice of instrument, convey a depth of emotion that’s remarkably impressive. It has moments of melancholy, but it’s not a sad album. Rather, it’s a reflective album, one that recognizes the reality of loss, but doesn’t discount hope for the future. If it’s the sound of a long, dark Scandinavian winter, it’s also the recognition that in a few months, it’ll be back to 22 hours of daylight again.
Lien never really made another album this traditional again. Her later work is much more in a conventional “world music” vein; it ranges from the pretty good (Aliens Alive) to the pretty disappointing (Baba Yaga), but in its quest for some kind of “creative fusion,” it never recovers the simple charm that made Felefeber such a joy to listen to.
Release date: 1995
Label: Shanachie
Rating: 10/10
3 Comments »
I kinda had that thought while I was writing the review…we wouldn’t normally review this kind of album, and I’m not sure anyone here would care about it. But I had to get from number 9 to number 7 somehow 
Number 7 is coming soon…
Yes, but all that subtlety and nuance won’t keep the devil from winning her soul.
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Comment by joiezabel — December 9, 2006 @ 1:15 pm
honestly don’t even know what to say about this. never heard it, never heard of it, don’t know if i care to.
nice review though…can’t wait to see the other 8.