I hadn’t heard of the artist Kate Havnevik until her name was mentioned by her manager (who is also credited with starting the infamous Hotel Café in Los Angeles), Josh Neuman, during a music business panel at SXSW. He said she was the voice you’ve heard numerous times, you just may not be aware that you had.
When I arrived home, there it was, her CD Melankton. He was right. The sultry bird from Norway had indeed crept into my subconscious while watched some emotional scene in Grey’s Anatomy, although I was unaware of it at the time.
With a tinge of Bjork’s tone, Kate’s “Timeless” has you contemplating life, your life, with both hope and a bit of melancholy, while it transcends from bare instrumentation into ‘80s electro rhythms.
Then it’s time to pour a smooth martini and “Travel In Time” to the days when Dion Warwick and Burt Bacharach teamed up for “Walk On By.” Turn down the lights, lean back in your fluffy pillow seat and spark up the hookah pipe, breathing in the sweet effervescence of “Suckerlove.”
Throughout each track, surprises occur through the sparkles of electronic pulses and beats, blended perfectly with organic strings and piano schemes, all wrapped with the purple velvet bow of Kate’s angelic vocal edge.
This is not to say that her lyrics don’t play a big part in the musical picture. Taking the first track, “Unlike Me,” as just one example: “There are no guarantees in life/Not for the present, nor for the future/All I know is that I’m here/Don’t know for how long/I love the way you live so intensely/Enjoy every minute in life.”
Enjoy every minute in life. I’ll drink to that.
