Ane Brun

Hotel Cafe - October 30, 2008

Live Review and Q&A by Thomas Hillard

On tour promoting her new record Changing of the Seasons, Norwegian singer/songwriter Ane Brun is in town with Tobias Fröberg. Playing Hotel Café tonight, she is one of the few and strong who clearly set her sights high and then easily claimed the summit. Songs from Changing of the Seasons are honest and clear - deceptively simple, using strings, guitar and vocals.

On this pleasant and appropriate fall evening, Hotel Café is packed. However it’s an unusual sight as many are comfortably sitting on the floor (instead of leaning against the back wall and support columns) in the middle of the room. On stage, Brun is animated, waving around as if possessed by her songs. Between them she notes how or why each song came to be; no explanation stands out more to then that for “The Puzzle,” a song she claims to have written for a friend that describes the intricacies of letting our heart be vulnerable and how others can take advantage of that. The lyrics say it all: “I walked into Love. I walked into a minefield I’d never heard of." Without looking around, you know everyone is reliving their own heart break. It’s an eerie feeling.

After the performance, I’m invited into the green room to speak with Ane. She is well composed, sweet, beautiful, and disarming. Not the soft shattered soul some of her songs suggest.

I started listening to Changing of the Seasons after I had separated with someone and was going through a lot of darkness, through it all those feelings started blossoming within me.

In a good way?

Absolutely! Is that more or less what it was all about?  Where did all these songs come from?

They come from my own experiences and experiences of my friends and family.

What song is it that starts out with “I walked into love”?

"The Puzzle."

So you said that was about a friend's experience…

Yeah but you know it’s not something that is hard to relate to.

That’s something everyone can relate to - it’s so personal and so direct. Ok. That was one of my inner personal queries. Your last record was still personal but I still feel like Changing of the Seasons was a lot more focused around coping with demons.

I’m in a different stage, like my stories, I’ve had three more years of experience, and also how you search for what you want to hear in yourself, you get to learn more about where you want to go. I really feel that Changing of the Seasons is for me very close to what I want to do.