Henriette SennenValdt
Henriette Sennenvaldt, the former front woman of the acclaimed, boundary defying Danish band, Under Byen, delves further into the far edges of pop on an album that explores the permeable boundaries between the world and ourselves. On her debut solo LP, Something Wonderful, she explores matters of the heart, though what is at stake is romance in its most inclusive sense. The album commits to the slowness and rapture, but balks at the particularity of sentimental narratives. Mining a musical history, Sennenvaldt croons, wavers, whoops, and whispers her way through layers of textured sound and merges several positions into paradoxical beauty.
Throughout Something Wonderful, horns blow – feverishly, delicately, confused, or structured – in the richly instrumented arrangements’ collage-like style that encourage each voice to do more than merely accompany. They contradict each other, often appear out of joint, approach and leave abruptly or softly, and form a continuity of interruption that carves out a choppy, precarious groove someplace between fragility and possibility. The album displays an obvious interest in the past—but whether it is a sly tribute or an examination of its implications, it never settles for an easy answer. It neither pathologizes nor idealizes its obsessions, but seems intent on wringing hope from banality and convention. Built with wit and playfulness, Something Wonderful is equally compelling and challenging.
Recorded by Peter Barnow, Nils Gröndahl, Mike Hillier, John McEntire and Henriette Sennenvaldt in Chicago, Copenhagen and London over 2016 - 2019, we are thrilled to release Something Wonderful on November 13th, 2020.