Henrik - Factions [album]

Lojinx Records

Session musician Henrik Irgens’ solo debut is nothing if aptly titled. The problems this album faces are the various musical factions within Henrik himself, which have all spilt out onto this record, or rather been collected from various bedroom recordings over the last two years. The young Dane needn’t, or indeed, shouldn’t have brought them all together.

Opening with ‘Hey Ho’, where Sigur Ros soundscapes play over a spoken sample, it’s a promising start. Henrik completely changes tack immediately with ‘Any Old Day’, as country blues plod along pleasantly enough. It’s a slight disappointment, however, after the opening track.

Next up is ‘Try Me’ which sounds a little like Morcheeba with a country twang and a bassline lifted right off Omar’s, ‘There’s Nothing Like This’. As it seems we may not return to the sound offered by the opener, I console myself with the thought that ‘Try Me’ is at least an improvement on the previous track. I’m still confused as to where this album is going though.

‘Is It’ is a sparse effort, a simple, muffled beat, an even simpler guitar strum and one of the better vocal performances we get to hear. Henrik’s voice is all the better for being less earnest for once.

‘Giving’ sees the album move back to electronics, this time 70’s Pink Floyd style sonic effects. In the background we hear more spoken samples; I think Henrik may have found a new toy, but then ‘This Sound’ demonstrates exactly why Henrik may favour vocal samples over his own at times. Here his voice treads worryingly close to Robbie Williams at his most feigned-heartfelt, and ‘Carmex’ continues the cheesy vocals. This time pulsating electronics and poor use of an e-bow are joined by, you guessed it, more spoken samples, now muddled and slightly annoying.

Thank heaven for ‘This Time’, by far the best track since ‘Hey Ho’. A nice hammer-on guitar line is accompanied by more subtle, and therefore superior dual vocals. I can’t help but think that this album may have been much better if Caroline Perjesi, who joins Henrik on vocal duties here, had been used more often, at least as lead on ‘This Sound’ and ‘Carmex’.

‘About You Today’ is so lo-fi that it sits out of place with the rest of the album, which is hardly coherent at the best of times. It sounds like a track he simply forgot to produce and left it in its earliest incarnation, seemingly recorded on a dictaphone.

The album ‘officially’ closes with the pointless, aimless drone of ’10 seconds’, which is relevant only in its summation of the album as a whole. I like to come away from an album feeling like I understood the artist’s creative idea. Here, I am just left confused and confounded, which is only compounded by the addition of two extra tracks that are both better than most of the album proper. Both are Elliott Smith-like acoustic affairs, both infinitely more melodic and featuring far superior vocals than ‘This Sound’ and ‘Carmex’, for example.

If Henrik can’t match what he produced on ‘Hey Ho’ and such Sigur Ros atmospherics were a fluke, then tracks such as ‘This Time’ and the two bonus tracks show the direction his music needs to take. It’s all in all a confusing debut, from which lessons should be learnt. Know your strengths, Henrik, and embrace them.