Biography
Fredrika Stahl
Born 1984-10-24, Stockholm, Sweden
Fredrika Stahl was only eighteen when she started work on her first album. As with many initial projects, nothing happened overnight; the record took nearly four years to make. Since that first venture, the musician’s output has been impressive and regular, with a new album every two years. Fredrika would be the favourite in any contest for the most Francophile Swede. She spent part of her childhood in France and has lived there, and, above all, she speaks the language of Edith Piaf fluently. Now at just 28, she is releasing her fourth album, the dazzling Off to Dance. “Albums are getting more and more difficult to make because I don’t want to repeat myself. But that’s why it’s interesting.”
More than interesting, this latest album is enthralling. Not just a new departure, Off to Dance is a fabulous renaissance of Fredrika Stahl. Once a regular feature in magazine jazz columns, the artist has been reborn as a pop phenomenon, joining an eminent family including Emiliana Torrini, Feist, Kate Bush and Keren Ann.“Basically, I think my raw work has always been very pop,” she confides.
Fredrika owes much of this change to the experience she has acquired over the last year or so. Since 2010, the musician has scored a hit with her album Sweep me Away, boosted by the success of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (a variation on the nursery rhyme used in a commercial for a famous - "well-known" is perhaps better for a car - make of car). Fredrika has also performed tirelessly, appearing in nearly 150 concerts in a duo or with a band, taking her songs from France to the UK, Poland, Germany, Turkey and even Algeria. She has also (trodden the boards of; perhaps "hit the stage") of the Théâtre du Châtelet with Benjamin Biolay and former Libertines front man Carl Barat for the Pop’pea project, a fresh rock take on Monteverdi’s ‘The Coronation of Poppea’. “These last two years have been very intense. It’s been like closing a chapter to better prepare the next one. So I naturally wanted to work with new people on this new record."
On the advice of her manager, the Swedish artist met up with producer Rob Ellis, a man who loves women of taste (he is known for his work with PJ Harvey, Marianne Faithfull and Anna Calvi). The producer (He) brought in a dazzling cast of musicians to back Fredrika, inviting Ben Christophers of Bat For Lashes, Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Tom Havelockfrom Cold Specks. Last winter, (delete "all") these brilliant artists locked themselves away in a studio installed in a house in a remote part of Wales with sheep on one side and a river on the other.“It was freezing. It never stopped raining outside. That made for a weird, almost mystical atmosphere.” The wild, bucolic Welsh landscape was an ideal setting for the young woman to get to know the others and record her songs. “I’ve always been melancholic. This time, I tried to make sure it wasn’t a handicap.”
In fact, Off to Dance is far from melancholic. It is a delicate, gracious record empowered by its inspired composition and that sensitivity that characterises Scandinavian songwriters.
It reintroduces us to a singer who can walk melodic tightropes(Trip me Up), weave true miracles of piano-based pop in the footsteps of Kate Bush or Joni Mitchell (Deep Breath Then Dive), connect with Regina Spektor (Off to Dance) or Fiona Apple (Glory), and finally shake a leg to seriously rival Feist or Lykke Li (We are Whole).
The album holds the first melodic pearls of 2013 (Off to Dance and the enchanting Little Muse, backed by silken arrangements). Above all, it breathes a genuine sensitivity, a spirit, a soul… “When I was younger, I wanted to do things properly, I didn’t want to make any mistakes. Working with Rob this time, I had to learn to loosen up and let the emotion take hold.”
When you ask what her plans are for the future, Fredrika says she would like to write a film soundtrack. On the silver screen,Off to Dance would be a shoo-in for an Oscar.
