Susanna – Go Dig My Grave album review

Folk, skiffle... and Joy Division, reworked by the Norwegian jazz doyenne.

susanna

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

Over the years, Norwegian vocalist Susanna Wallumrød has perfected the art of achieving a lot while seemingly doing very little. Using the sparsest of instrumental settings, the searing purity of her voice, usually recorded without any significant post-production, creates an emotional space that’s rich in drama. Paring away any harmonic excess, her ability to find the poignant core of a song and bring to it new insights and narrative detail has the effect of rendering the old and familiar, striking and new. Thus, in this collection, traditional folk tunes such as Rye Whiskey, Go Dig My Grave, the chirpy skiffle-era hit Freight Train and even Joy Division’s Wilderness fit neatly together like a melancholic jigsaw, each piece underscored with a captivating, haunting stillness. The hesitant steps of Henry Purcell’s Cold Song are a reminder of Susanna and Swiss baroque harp player Giovanna Pessi’s breathtaking 2011 ECM release If Grief Could Wait, which contains a similarly eclectic tracklisting. Pessi’s delicate plucking weaves an intense web of notes against which Susanna’s plaintive tones resonate. Slow music it may be, but it’s never less than beautiful.

Sid Smith

Sid's feature articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Prog, Classic Rock, Record Collector, Q, Mojo and Uncut. A full-time freelance writer with hundreds of sleevenotes and essays for both indie and major record labels to his credit, his book, In The Court Of King Crimson, an acclaimed biography of King Crimson, was substantially revised and expanded in 2019 to coincide with the band’s 50th Anniversary. Alongside appearances on radio and TV, he has lectured on jazz and progressive music in the UK and Europe.  

A resident of Whitley Bay in north-east England, he spends far too much time posting photographs of LPs he's listening to on Twitter and Facebook.