Jenny Wilson

Wed 27th May, 2009 in Features

In a little tucked away café just off a busy Stockholm street, Jenny Wilson sits, surrounded by the smells of freshly baked cinnamon buns and roasted coffee. Wilson is tall, dark and commands attention. Her hair is pulled back in a low pony, her sweater is light; perfect for the Swedish summer. When she speaks she does so with a confidence in her eyes, though her voice sometimes falters under her slightly broken English.

At least that’s what I assume. On the other end of the phone line, half a world away, she could be wearing and doing anything in that café off that busy street. But listening to her latest album Hardships, you have to believe that whatever she is up to, it’s both simple and complex, hard and soft, black and white… salt and pepper.

“If you listen to the first album, Love and Youth, it’s more like all spices mixed up together in a big bowl. Then I just shook the spices together, but then this time I wanted to make it more like salt and pepper,” Wilson tells FL.

Taking time out from her career after the release of critically acclaimed debut Love and Youth to give birth to her second child Wilson, allowed the space to work out her next move. “During the time that I was pregnant and while I was taking care of the baby I had so much time to think. I saw something in front of me appear, and the visions I had were that I must make music in this way. It was like my voice turned into something new it was searching for some other language. I built some sort of universe with pictures, and very strong visions. I had many things I could see very clear in front of me long before the songs existed.”

The culmination of her visions, Hardships is an album that retains the kookiness of Love and Youth while branching out into foreign R&B territories. Based around the theme of Mother War, Wilson admits she found it hard to centralise all her thoughts into one cohesive album theme.

“At first I was confused about how I wanted to sing about seemingly so different topics,” Wilson muses. “Motherhood and war don’t seem to fit together. But then I realised that they do fit together. They do walk hand in hand because having such a great responsibility can make you violent and make you feel such strong feelings. You can walk through a fire; you can definitely shoot someone down because you want to protect your kid. So there is a lot of violence in this great love and that was what I wanted to explore. But it took me a while before I really understood what the fuck I was trying to say,” she adds, laughing.

Previously associated with Rabid Records, the small DIY label of Swedish band The Knife, Wilson was forced to strike out on her own with the release of Hardships. ” Love and Youth grew too big for [Rabid], so they couldn’t work with me anymore. I love to work with The Knife because they are so amazing, but I had to leave them and I had to find some other solution. Starting my own label was quite an easy decision. I wanted to have control over so many details; I thought it would be stupid to just give them away to someone else.”

Forming Gold Medal Recordings, Wilson now adds record exec to her list of singer, songwriter, producer and engineer credentials. Though the label was created purely to aid in the release of her solo music, Wilson says she would love to one day be in a position to produce and release other artists under the Gold Medal banner.

“I’m so curious and I’m so interested in how music sounds,” she insists. “I really love to listen to the different flavours in music and I want to explore that for myself. I would love to produce some other artists as well, because I feel that now I can do that, I know that I could do a great job for someone else.”

Currently on a Scandinavian tour, multi-instrumentalist Wilson prefers instead the solitude of working as a solo artist. She appreciates the flexibility she has to make split decisions and follow her gut instincts. Though Hardships cites 17 guest musicians between its waxed grooves, Wilson, perched in her cinnamon scented café, is first and foremost a solitary wolf.

“I think that’s its very important to [be] quite lonely [in work]. I walk into my studio, close the door and I write. I don’t let anybody interrupt me for a long time until I feel, okay, now I’ve reached the core of my own universe,” Wilson says. “Not until then can I invite people to join me to play and say things about my work.”

Hardships is out now on Gold Medal through Etcetera Etcetera.