The Norwegian songwriter and singer Siv Jakobsen seems to fill her tunes with a storm of lyrical tension, sung over a sea of instrumental calm — her new album, The Nordic Mellow, is not always as intense as the song we're premiering today, "Shallow Digger," would lead you to believe. (The high-powered arrangements here, in fact, remind me of Led Zeppelin's thunderous "Immigrant Song.") Siv Jakobsen J?rgen Nordby/Courtesy of the artist Jakobsen told me that "Shallow Digger" was the piece that surprised her the most. "It's very different — it's intense and loud and brooding, and just sort of came out. It surprised me lyrically, I didn't quite understand what it was about until I wrote down the words that had come out — but they made sense, even still. It's as if it was written by my subconscious, this slowly brooding tale that touches on being shallow, selfish and, ultimately, human. The song was a sort of epiphany for me, realizing that although I am, and we are all, products of this massive world, we aren't always the best at taking care of it. It came from feeling shallow and selfish and frustrated about that very fact." The Nordic Mellow was written over a period of a year-and-a-half, following the release of her popular EP The Lingering in 2015 — songs from which drew over 10 million streams. Jakobsen says she's a slow writer, that each song on The Nordic Mellow contains "some sort of frustration" and that her approach to lyrics and music were bolder than ever.
