Ane Brun - After the Great Storm (Balloon Ranger)
Add Date: 11/10/2020
Focus Tracks: After the Great Storm, Honey, Crumbs, Don’t Run & Hide
FCC: Clean
Formats: Chill, Electronic, NACC Top 200, Submodern, & Triple A
Artist Info: Though ANE BRUN has been kept busy the last few years by the release of multiple of songs and albums, those who follow her more closely will have noticed something unusual about the always productive, ever innovative artist’s work: she’s not released a collection of new original music since 2015’s acclaimed When I’m Free, which took her to the top of the charts both in her native Norway and her adopted homeland of Sweden.
Fortunately, that’s about to change, something she’s hinted at since March with the arrival of one new song a month. Furthermore, if the absence of new material was masked by her activities, the largesse of her comeback is conspicuous: released on October 30, 2020, AFTER THE GREAT STORM, her eighth album, is the first of not one but two records, with her ninth album, HOW BEAUTY HOLDS THE HAND OF SORROW, due a month later on November 27, 2020.
As is typical with BRUN, AFTER THE GREAT STORM is both intimate and universal, often simultaneously, not least on its velveteen title track, which seems especially resonant thanks to its description of “the feeling that can come after a great ordeal, when everything is over and you almost reach a state of euphoria and lightness. It’s like what people describe when they’ve had a near death experience, or an epiphany: the feeling of being part of a bigger universe.” Such a sensation is doubtless one for which we all currently hunger, and ‘We Need A Mother’, which closes the album in mournful but optimistic style, highlights why. A call for overdue unity embellished by sounds from around the globe, it finds BRUN especially forthright, declaring “I am offended by a lack of human decency.”
The song could have been precipitated by all manner of things, but was originally inspired by a corporate business conference she attended, where, in the opening speech, the importance of climate action was discussed before, BRUN remembers, “the night ended with enormous fireworks, costing millions, exploding over the water. It reminded me of how we as individuals, businesses and societies so often practice double standards when it comes to our values and priorities, myself included; how hard it is to live a wholesome, sustainable life; and how we as grown-up humans can act like adolescents, and it seems like we need mature leaders to keep us on the right track. I remember feeling so frustrated and upset, and when I woke up the next day I wrote this song. After I had finished, I felt relieved and calm.”
These are feelings provoked throughout the timeless, timely AFTER THE GREAT STORM, which, despite a prolonged gestation, arrives at an unusually perfect moment. “Both albums deal with the bigger questions in life,” BRUN acknowledges, “but in 2020 these questions have become even bigger. Even though I wrote most of them before this whole pandemic started, I feel they all have a message that fits the situation we’re in: frustration over the state of the world, how to grieve for a loved one, existentialism, love, relationships, loneliness, inner struggles, sleepless nights… I guess they’re just about being human.”
Being human, naturally, means we need comfort and community, and BRUN has taken time to plot another unforgettable path towards them. AFTER THE GREAT STORM maps that route. However much has changed, whatever you knew of her before, be sure to pay attention.