Desire Avenue

Hi all,
I'm a long-time Stina fan and major lurker on this board. In the winter my obsession usually ramps up even further, as I do find Stina's music to be perfect for the season in a way that summer sunshine just doesn't quite tally with it! Anyway, I haven't really been listening to anything else lately and like pretty much any self-respecting Stina fan I'm just so tired of waiting to see or hear anything new... so I decided to write a blog piece in praise of her talents to at least put a little something new out there. I'm just a humble blogger but I know how happy it makes me when I stumble across anything anybody's written about Stina, so I thought I'd share it here. Nothing in it will be new to any of you, but I really wanted to try and put into words what makes her so special, so here's the link in case anybody is interested: https://sallywoodcock.wordpress.com/201 ... ordenstam/

Well done, Sally, that's a fascinating read - and really well-written. Just for 10 minutes I was able to temporarily escape from the horror of the contemporary world prospect into another gloss on my favourite musician.
Plus that's the first post of any sort here for quite some time. It seems that many people are more likely to discuss Stina on her Facebook fanpage now, which is fine, but it doesn't quite do it for those of us who like a more discursive and fulsome approach. So your Blog post is really welcome. I've written a few similar things, just, as you say, to try and articulate what makes her so special, but I've never been a public blogger.

I'm going to take issue with your selection of Stina's 'masterpieces', but then we all have to feel differently and can argue these things forever. Anyway, they're all masterpieces! For me, the clutch of songs she wrote for the Jean-Claude movie, the music and arrangements as well as the lyrics, is her masterpiece - and really she has done very little since.

Interesting how you point up the Romeo and Juliet effect. I'm always intrigued by how many people favour that one song above all Stina's other work, but I think the film might be to blame. And I think if some of those same people realised what the song was actually about they might feel differently! (And amid the current outpourings of grief for Leonard Cohen everyone seems to have forgotten - or never known - that Stina rivals him for poetic expression, especially the poetry of despair and disillusion, and totally eclipses him in musical terms.)

Three things continue to intrigue me about Stina - one is that someone of such creative talent, who always said in interviews that she 'needed to be creative in order to survive', must still be creating or expressing herself in some medium. I'd love to know what it might be.

Second - yes, Radiohead, Jim O'Rourke, Sylvian etc respect and love Stina. But I'm always surprised that more people like myself, who work in more jazz/experimental/'classical'-straight contemporary composition fields aren't more interested in Stina. There are such riches, musically.

Third - in many interviews she talks about something she once described as 'the fiction filter' - the sense that her songs (and perhaps her wider life) take incidents and apply an imaginative 'fictional' slant. When you think about it, it raises a lot questions about her behaviour and psychology as well as the artistic process. The whole of the Magasin project (Tank dig en manniska/Think of a person - essentially her final work) is concerned with this. Worthy of an entire blog post in itself!

Anyway, thanks Sally. More please!

Thanks sound world, I'm glad you enjoyed reading my piece. Like you, I yearn for more longform, in-depth conversations than social media seems to provide most of the time, but I guess that means I'm getting old...!

Since it's a personal blog, I figured I would go ahead and call out what I truly think are her masterpieces, but there's so much to recommend on all her records. If pressed to suggest a starting place for new listeners it would entirely depend on their pre-existing knowledge of Stina and their general taste, but since mine runs towards music that is spooky and dissonant I would always make a case for Dynamite as the ultimate actualisation of everything that is present to lesser degrees in all her other albums. I was also focusing on her main solo albums because if I took a trip down b-side-compliation-soundtrack alley then I'd still be writing the post now!

I'm pretty firmly an indie kind of girl, so can't speak for how Stina is regarded in jazz circles - it's really interesting to me to hear you say that she isn't taken very seriously. I was pretty chuffed to know that Jim O'Rourke and David Sylvian are fans and I think more people would feel strongly about her work if they were exposed to it - I really think the success of Little Star can almost be seen as a curse because it is not really representative of how sonically explorative she can be and I also think some people are still put off by her voice , assuming that it might grate across a whole album when, as I said in my blog, I think she works miracles to find ways to use it to disconcerting effect.

I also agree that it seems odd that she's been so silent when she's so often articulated her need to be constantly creative. Mind you, the interviews are thin on the ground these days and maybe she' s found other outlets to keep her sane? I can think of many artists whose apparently 'mature' work is not as impassioned and liberated as their earlier stuff, so if Stina feels she currently has nothing she wants to share then maybe that's just something I'll have to respect...

That's a really nice blog,Sally.
Very positive throughout.
Hopefully readers who are unfamiliar with Stina's work will be intrigued enough to investigate further.

Thanks, Rob - I hope so too. It's so infuriating that Stina doesn't get the credit she truly deserves so if I can signal even a couple of folk her way then I'd be so happy!