Jenny Wilson: Kooky? No, Ijust love to be myself

Wed 31st Jan, 2007 in Features

The glacial frontier of Sweden continues to get chipped away by the success of its indie music. In churning out heavenly bite-sized indie-pop gems, now there’s somebody new wanting to mesmerise you. In what has been a busy twelve months for Jenny Wilson - touring Europe extensively off the back of debut solo album Love and Youth and having her second baby – no mean feat – she embarks on a maiden voyage to our shores next month.

In asking Wilson about her decision to strike out independently from First Floor Power she explains in her Swedish lilt it was more of a need to rely wholly on herself.  “The album is personal because I really wanted to experiment,” she says. ”I was really fed up with compromises and so I wanted to do something totally new, to listen to my own instincts. I didn’t really know what to expect from myself but I’m very pleased and proud of this album”. 

So Wilson should be. Where melancholy and pop meet at the-all-heart-junction of self-awareness, the album is a gorgeous crush of shifting emotions and spectacular mood swings.  It rhythmically wanders around pictorial curves and is melodically wondrous in its lush simplicity enveloped by a hi-spirited, lo-fi elegance.

Certainly, as the album title suggests, it tackles some adolescent issues. Listeners can rehash what were once important matters regarding the odds and ends of growing up, surviving the socially ordered environment of school, acceptance by friends and realising your approval but perhaps at the cost of not truly being yourself. “In some of the songs I really tried to tell something that I’d been through,” she explains. ”But some of the songs are more like observations that I did when I was going to school.”

Last track Balcony Smoker unveils an ability to mesh sadness and fragility into something quite beautiful. I wondered about the story behind it. ”It is a little about the neighbourhood where I live,” she says. ”It is quite suburban with a lot of grey concrete houses, very ugly houses. I think there are a lot of people who don’t feel too well living here and don’t take care of themselves.They seem to be very lonely. I see so many people standing alone on their balconies smoking and I feel there’s something very sad about that”. Indeed, the cigarette smoke could double as a lonely haze or fog that can surround us stopping one from going forward in life.  “Yes, that’s a very beautiful picture,” she says.  “It is much like a metaphor.”

Speaking of symbolism, as a former art school student, she left after the birth of her first child five years ago to pursue music full-time. “I was drawing a lot and I was trying to find my own language,” she says. “Now when I’m making music I think it’s definitely very important to use pictures and videos”. Her live performances find her wearing some creative outfits too a la Kate Bush. “I work with an artist and she is making all my stage clothing,” she adds. “I’m going to wear some completely new things for Australia.”

With comparisons to Kate Bush in stage presence, some reviewers moreover have labelled her music style equally as ‘kooky’ or ‘idiosyncratic’. A Regina Spektor interview last month in Drum Media raised an intriguing question – if being typecast as ‘kooky’ bothered her. I ask Wilson the same thing. ”It’s a very simple way of describing something,” she answers. “I mean . . . when you read anything about Bjork, that she’s such a strange person or that she’s kooky . . . I think it’s a little bit lame”.  Interestingly, Spektor maintained that Dylan’s Everybody Must Get Stoned or The Beatles‘ I Am the Walrus were crowned ‘adventurous’ yet women exploring the same level of eccentricity are ‘kooky’. Wilson agrees – “I’ve been thinking about that fact,” she says. ”Women and men are not treated equal in music or anywhere. It can be so phoney when you read it in reviews like ‘Oh my God, there she goes again’. Just because I produced my own album I am somebody very strange!”.   

If that is the case, then come and relish in a little bit of kook and female strangeness next month. It’s refreshingly adventurous. 

Wilson’s Love & Youth is out now on Hussle/EMI

Catch Wilson when she tours Australia this February
For tour details click here.