Monica Heldal - Ravensdale

Monday, time to introduce the first "Record Of The Week" for 2022.

We start the year abit softish and present "Ravensdale", the third album from the Norwegian singer-songwriter Monica Heldal.

Monica Heldal is back with her first album following five years of silence. The 30 year old musician released her Norwegian Grammy winning debut album in 2013, while its follow-up made the Top 3 of the album chart in her home territory. She subsequently toured with Ben Howard in Europe and John Butler Trio in the USA, while her music has been streamed 40 million times on Spotify.

Monica Heldal (born 24 January 1991 in Bergen, Norway) is a Norwegian musician (vocals, guitar) and songwriter. Her debut studio album, Boy From the North, was released on 4 November 2013. For the album she received two awards during Spellemannprisen in 2013: Rookie of the Year and Best Pop Solo Artist. She also won the Bendiksenprisen in 2013 and was nominated for the Statoil Scholarship that same year.

When Monica Heldal released her second album "The One In The Sun" and was ready for the tour, she was knocked out by tinnitus and sound sensitivity. "I was extremely hypersensitive to sound in the time right after. It went very hard on my psyche. I isolated myself for fear of being exposed to noise. The sound of a car driving past could be pure suffering, she told VG in July 2016".

Now five years later the hearing is better and a new album is out.

"Ravensdale" is a soft guitar driven album full of sparkling, shimmering, alternately low-key and expansive, ever-captivating musical carousel that moves best at a speed of 33 1/3 revs per minute. Her voice is like balm for the soul, a wonderful start to this hopeful year. Sit comfortably, lean back, close your hands, let your eyelids fall down and enjoy the nice sweet melodies. You feel the appropriations on the strings before the tone is taken, you hear the hands in the air before they land on the drum skins, you hear when Monica opens her lips before the first words slip out like a silk shawl in the wind. Wonderful, just wonderful. Together, Monica, multi-instumentalist Cato “Salsa” Thomassen and drummer Kenneth Kapstad (MOTORPSYCHO/GÅTE) conjure up intermittently ornate soundscapes, rich with tones and percussive details, where guitars and tunings of all kinds float round like planets in melodic, musical orbit.

Today's tune "Wallowa Lake", taken from the album "Ravensdale", enjoy!



More info @

Official Monica Heldal Web

Listen to ”Monica Heldal - Wallowa Lake" on Spotify!

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