by Phil Scarisbrick

The Nordic singer/songwriter’s third album digs deep into her inner self – and in a sonically-expansive and beautiful return, she replenishes what was there before 

It is easy to treat our mind as a place where we can pick and choose what is at the forefront at will. We can bury those memories or feelings that we don’t want to be conscious of deep under the heavy soil we pile upon it, while keeping our positivity in our mind’s eye as an eternal constant. The reality, though, is that we have little control over what springs to the surface, and whatever we try to discard will grow back quicker and quicker each time. This ‘emotional gardening’ is the bedrock on which Gardening has blossomed, and the results are a joy to experience.

Sonically, it feels more ambitious than 2020’s A Temporary Soothing, but retains that sense that Jakobsen is performing just for you. Romain’s Place builds beneath a delicately delivered vocal. The cyclical ‘How am I back here again, afraid again?’ adds a brief interlude before its relentless ascent continues – before falling down into the acoustic finger picks of following track, Most of the Time. ‘I wanna know what it feels like to be alone without you in my mind’ sings Jakobsen, her tone yearning for something she knows she perhaps can’t have because the idea itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Bad By Design, its reprise, and Tangerine, make up a beautiful triplicate centrepiece for the album. The former again relies on a circling, finger-picked acoustic, before a lullabilic backing vocal takes the initiative along a with a collection of intertwining instruments. Tangerine’s heavy strums sit beneath the stark imagery of the abstract (I’m a tangerine, peel me, let me drip down your lip) to the literal (Here I am naked in the frontroom, the neighbours are staring and I’m looking back). The bitter overtones of the chorus lyrics – ‘Like disease I bleed’ – are matched by a honeysweet backing that takes the edge off their stark intentions.

Album closer, The Bay, is the record’s most bittersweet moment. Again, its backing is achingly beautiful, but in a way that invokes a feeling of mourning, as we hear our narrator declares, ‘It was all a dream, so it seems / Courtney Marie in stereo / Singing about you and me / Then I’m on this ten lane highway’ before the floodgates open and the music comes pouring out, seemingly out of control, before settling down into the final, contemplative verse, with Jackobsen concluding ‘You were afloat in the bay / I was a fish, I wished / But leaving that way / Oh what a horrid fate’.

There are times on this album where the themes and thoughts that Jakobsen digs up stop you in your tracks. Her ability to flit between abstract thoughts that float away in the ether, and then pinpoint hyper-real sucker punches make this album an exhilarating emotional rollercoaster. It is another reminder what a wonderful artist she is.

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