As of this week, the video of Theresa Andersson's one-woman-band "Na Na Na" has logged 712,262 views and count on YouTube. From the look of it, the clip cost around $20 to bring forth. Alone in a corner of her Algiers Point kitchen, Andersson builds a full arrangement by working effects pedals and samplers with her bare feet, even as she sings and swaps out acoustic guitar and violin. It is an impressive moment of sonic choreography.
A like version of "Na Na Na" opens "Hummingbird, Go!", Andersson's latest album for Basin Street Records. In keeping with the tweedy nature of the project -- she pressed into service Barq's root beer bottles and wine specs for intelligent effects -- the entire album was recorded in the same kitchen where the "Na Na Na" video was shot, right alongside the refrigerator.
"Hummingbird, Go!" introduces a new side of Andersson. She has been a fixture of the New Orleans music community for nearly two decades now. But most traces of the jazz-pop singer, songwriter and fiddler familiar to local audiences are departed. Instead, she reconnects with her native Sweden. Swedish singer-songwriter Tobias Froberg produced and engineered the record; it was mixed in a studio apartment on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland, her childhood home.
Perhaps because of that bloodline, the criminal record is load with a Nordic indie pop shininess. Andersson's high-pitched vocals and ethereal instrumentation can be the aural equivalent of the Northern Lights -- spectral, lovely, haunting. So they ar on the beautiful, entrancing "Innan du gar," a duet with Norwegian artist Ane Brun.
Songwriting has never been Andersson's strength; here, she avoids that booby trap with structures that are fluid and malleable. She is free to chub mackerel with tone, sustain, moods and shadows. These dictate where the audio dramas begin and end. Thus, the title track is a two-minute instrumental. The album's endorsement song, "Clusters," clocks in at a scant minute-24. "Introducing the Kitchenettes," a twist on doo-wop protocol, barely merits 43 seconds.
A close listen reveals the occasional New Orleans speech pattern. Buried deep in "Birds Fly Away" is a sample of Big Easy drummer Smokey Johnson's big beat from "I Can't Help It (Parts 1 & 2)." Allen Toussaint makes a guest show on the unlisted, "secret" bonus track, "Now I Know."
With its slide fiddle and ukulele-like strumming, "Hi-Low" is Stockholm via the Hawaiian isles. "Na Na Na" is, like Feist's "1234" -- which too found its mass audience via the small screen, as the soundtrack to an iPod nano commercial -- light, airy, playful and absolutely irresistible.
The skip-along "Japanese Art" is a fun, bracing update on the cliche of the musician on the route who misses a loved one back home. Sparse percussion, dashing fiddle and a mouthpiece harp carry such lyrics as, "Japanese art goes to my heart/New Orleans makes me sing/Stockholm is nice, Paris at night/New York's the coolest thing/All my love, I'm vocalizing to you/Every time I go somewhere, I maintain you in my mind/you're with me all the time."
Some ideas unravel too much. The guitar finale of the otherwise winning "The Waltz" meanders to no hearty conclusion. "Locusts Are Gossiping" lacks the charm of the rest of the record.
Mostly, her musings are worth hearing. A intimate acoustic guitar figure ushers in "God's Highway" like a raw dawn; Andersson's voice harmonizes with Froberg's as if on a Celtic ballad.
Arrangements are deceptively simple, telling more of themselves with every hear. The last "Minor Changes" is a self-contained little tragedy. Against a Greek chorus of mournful violin and a parade beat snare, she sings, "Don't follow me is what I'm saying/Don't know where I'll go but I know I'm not staying/Dreams at my back push me/I'm sailing free." With "Hummingbird, Go!" she has indeed sailed away from safe harbors. It was a journey worth the risks.
THERESA ANDERSSON CD RELEASE PARTIES
What: Two performances celebrating the vent of her new CD "Hummingbird, Go!"
When and Where:Tonight at 11 at Republic New Orleans, 828 S. Peters St., 504.528.8282, $5; and a free establish Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Louisiana Music Factory, 210 Decatur St., 504.586.1094.
See and learn: For video of Andersson or to listen to her music, visit world Wide Web.nola.com/music/.
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