Soren Anders must get a smirky kick out of CD reviewers, because he makes it next to impossible for us to classify his music.  I had the same problem about a year or so ago when I reviewed the CD by his band Shimmerplanet.   It was one of my favorite CDs of
the year, but finding myself at a loss for words for the genre, I wound up having to classify it as “avant-garde rock.”  Which is reviewer-speak for “I don’t know what the heck this is.”
 
I was just going to file Anders’ solo offering under “singer/songwriter,” but that puts him in the same category as folk singers, which he definitely is not, and Americana, protest songs, and other stuff that he isn’t.  When I look at these six haunting, sophisticated
songs as a whole, I would call it “classical virtuoso avant-garde pop,” but I know “virtuoso” is not an adjective, and I have to present a clearly-defined genre for the appropriate field in this review, so I can just hear Anders snickering as I wimp out and call it “avant-garde singer/songwriter.”  Fine.  I can forgive him for putting me in this spot.  The music makes his constant teasing very forgivable.  Although I’d love to know what we writers ever did to him.
 
If you are a fan of Shimmerplanet, put aside everything you already know about Soren Anders, and let’s start again.  This EP is more for people who preferred Rufus Wainwright’s “Want Two” album to the more commercially praised “Want One.”  Orchestral, intelligent, and in the case of the opening track “I Know a Hundred Ways to Die,” inspired by the poetry of a Pulitzer Prize-winning bisexual bohemian poet.  I think Wainwright would love to add this EP to his collection.  
 
These songs are a study in contrasts.  Simple, yet intellectually challenging.  Gloomy, yet beautiful.  Artistically sophisticated, yet starkly presented with such stripped-down production that it sounds like Anders is whispering right in your ear.   
 
The music on all these tracks is done with a quiet orchestra – strings, piano, and on some tracks, a chorus.  Yet the lyrics are not polite.  Sometimes, especially in contrast to the elegant music, they can be somewhat jarring.  In “Ways to Die,” for example, over the
gentle bell tones and crystalline lullaby sounds, he takes lyrics from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry about wanting to commit suicide but not wanting to cause a big cleanup for someone else in the process.  In the musically smoother and warmer “Want Nothing,”
we get cryptic, uncomfortable lyrics about embracing emptiness.  On first listen, it sounds like an appropriate theme some for the anti-consumerism movement, but after a while, you realize that Anders is not exactly embracing spirituality either.  The song is a totally
overwhelmed response to the whole holiday season, rejecting the gifts and gaudiness but not sure how to approach the true meaning, either.
 
The problem with sticking to the orchestral sounds all the way through is that after a while, they do start to sound the same.  I do think this collection needs at least one track with a different instrument or tempo to pull me out of the hypnosis after the first few tracks.  But this still works.  The effect is still with me, and I turned off the CD player almost an hour ago.  
 
Anders is truly passionate about his music, and if that means going with the inspiration and refusing to make my job easier to sticking to a particular genre, so be it.  I’ll be waiting with great interest for the next offering, and if I wind up having to call it something like “avant-garde country western,” at least I know he’ll make the listening experience more than worth it.

Link to article on indie-music.com

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