If I could limit the use of the phrase “liminal space” to describe a single artist’s music, it might be that of Fine Glindvad Jensen. The Copenhagen musician points to it on ‘Much to say’, a song from her new album Jazz dreams that gets at the limits of language beyond thought: “Once whatever was between the lines/ Somehow paints the picture out loud.” That’s one way of keying into Fine’s songwriting, which remains as beguiling as it was on her solo debut, Rocky Top Ballads, if a little more flexible. In bending the album’s arrangements to the logic – though not any particular tropes – of its titular elements, she draws a mercurial portrait of desire out of the hollow ends of days, the emptiness of words, the endless stream of reference points. Twist their shape slightly, lean into the shadows, and you’ll always be surprised by what you see.
1. The thing
The opening track gives definition to the album title, introducing the record not as a collection of dreamy jazz music but with the kind of jazz improvisation that might arise in a dream, where no genre conventions can be played straight. The modest groove the band musters can only be described as Lynchian, and Fine takes center stage like the one background character capable of gleaning the horror lurking underneath: just looking around, she professes, “Let’s quit this scene.” You barely have to lean into the space between her words to hear echoes of haunted synths. ‘The thing’ sounds like a song that seems to have emerged out of thin air, yet has been fermenting for quite some time. “It’s a mad, mad order,” after all. Don’t expect linearity.
2. If you wanna come down
The second track extends a hand to the audience – you is both intimate and universal, of course – inviting us to slip into this madder realm. “One shock is all it takes” to cross the threshold. Based on the refrain alone, your mind might register this song as ‘The thing’, but the “thing you have in you” that she keeps singing about remains elusive – an assurance, an apology? But the memory she eventually brings up is concrete and widely applicable: “The music loud/ Laughing like we’ve never known a doubt/ I drove my car into city lights.” This kind of music may not beg for attention, but the bass line here alone – slinky, thick as snow – urges you to turn up the volume.
3. I could
And in doing so, you won’t be disappointed as soon as ‘I could’ swoops in with its modulated guitar (flanger, I’d have to guess?) and another solid bass line, gradually enveloped by roomy, hazy tones. There’s no doubt this is quiet music that’s meant to be played loud, not drift into the background, with a visceral sensuality to boot: “I could drink you cold and strong,” Fine sings, “Make you feel like a rolling stone.” If she’s singing about a memory, she makes it sound like the present.
4. Goodbye brain
As with ‘The thing’, the hook worms that its way into your brain is the most mystifying part about it, an Aldous Harding-like line over a Mazzy Star-esque arrangement. The lack of punctuation makes a difference – she’s not singing “Goodbye, brain!” but about “a goodbye brain,” like it’s a thing she’s watching from a distance. As a love song, it’s simple enough for context to fill in the gaps: “Your name is like a bell to me babe/ The whistle from a train/ Yeah it does take my mind away babe.” It’s both physiological and cosmic, making her feel both “hollow and full of dreams.” Over a woozy wash of strings, an acoustic guitar solo rides the song out, somehow both fast and slow.
5. Get in
“Walking is the act of speaking,” Fine sang at the start of the album, and here we grasp a little more of what she means. Being out and about seems to be the sole source of inspiration on ‘Get in’, but how can the previous song’s rush of infatuation compare to mundane observations of people hanging out and airplanes flying overhead? The answer is in the way Fine plays with a sense of altitude, which hits you just as she looks out over the city from the eleventh floor: Mads Muurholm’s booming drums glide in like a jab of vertigo before dancing with waves of off-kilter keys. Seemingly out of nowhere, Fine comes alive with a song.
6. Any minute
Since drums have now prominently entered the fold, they quickly engender the song’s vast architecture of longing – the swing of surging anticipation and flickering light. While ‘I could’ saw the singer offering to come to her lover’s place, here she’s caught waiting for the presence that draws her into the light.
7. Million years
Instrumentally, there is a kind of role reversal here as an enchanting piano melody balloons out while the drums burrow inward. In the surety of a momentary glance, the singer gets lost in the thought of infinite embrace – though, with each repetition, a million years seems but another stretch but finite time.
8. Sometimes I rush
And, with each repetition, “sometimes” scans more and more like an understatement: how quickly did “I could hold you a million years” turn it into “Sometimes I want you more than anything”? More than a touch of humility, it’s just a word for Fine to spin her late-night thoughts around, as illusory as the synths that encircle them are slightly eerie, yet never quite menacing; jst enough to stir you in the hollow dead of night, where every thought is a vicious cycle.
9. Run
Fine’s lyrics become conversational, even directly confrontational: “Do you want me to dream?” she asks. “What do you want? Do you want me to keep it in my mind?” Even atop a murky, downtempo instrumental, the shift in tone is hard to miss, especially as her voice glides around the final words in each question, stacking harmonies as if mind is a universe unto itself, one she’d happily traverse on her own.
10. Moment
Veering deeper into solitude, ‘Moment’ strips things back to clean electric guitar, bass, and vocals. It’s fitting, considering the singer suspects the strange feeling in the air has something to do with her band leaving. It sounds off-the-cuff but just as timeless.
11. Everything in the shade
With the band suddenly back together, as if the majority of the album simply occupies the blurry space between soundcheck and live performance, Fine delivers the perfect pop song. In the context of an emotionally slippery album, ‘Everything in the shade’ sounds remarkably composed, especially as she sings, “I want to thank you for our time.” She’ll always be a phone call away, but it’s nothing to sweat about.
12. Portal
A sense of uncertainty looms back into the picture, with a bit of a meta twist on top: “Maybe it’s not just fine/ Maybe that same old song will stay alive.” Ha! Maybe it’s just another expression of this unrelenting feeling, but a sense of history is embedded in the flute solo, performed by Henning Jensen, that peaks out towards the end. It keeps something alive.
13. Much to say
Throughout Jazz dreams, Fine balances classic and collagist approaches to songwriting, but never do they blend as fluidly as they do here. Parts drift in and out with no discernible logic, but the tune at the core is undeniable. Having previously let the moon answer for her, she can finally read her poetry: it “keeps hanging new to you.” So what if you’re struck by the same old feeling, the same old song, the same sky? Does it not feel new, still?
