-- "Stina - and she closed her eyes" by Andres Lokko. Far, far front, almost next to me in the couch, lies Stina Nordenstam's voice. Every movement her lips does, every time she breathes in or out, every time the teeth graze the tongue they reach all the way to my heart. Every word, every syllable is directed only to me. It is so close. I actually don't know when I last heard a voice that had managed to pin itself to my subconscious before it almost had left the speakers. SN - Everyone I worked with tried to persuade me that the song shouldn't be as much in front as it does on the record. Everyone said that it would sound strange when it ends up on the CD. But I insisted, says Stina Nordenstam by the window-table at a cafe at Karlaplan. She got as she wanted. She usually does. Simply because she's right. The story about the 24-year old Stina from Fisksatra is no longer important. There were reasons to tell it when she released her debut album Memories of a Colour two years ago. There were reasons to tell it then, since the record contained music and lyrics that had been written during a long period of her life. Stina Nordenstam's second album, And She Closed Her Eyes, is not a part of that story. There are lines that are from then. But the whole is more than just a new chapter, it's a completely new book with - so far - unwritten pages. SN - After the first record had been released, which was in November 1991, I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I just felt really bad. It was some kind of exhaustion, I guess. Mainly because I released songs that I had kept for myself for so long. And I also got a jagged picture of myself, due to things I read about me everywhere, that I was so fragile and melancholy and so. But after a while it meant something that I didn't quite understand. During spring 1992 Klas Lundig - Stina's record label's boss and most dedicated supporter - starts talking that she should go to London and play. SN - He was constantly talking about a record label that was called 4AD and who were interested in me. I had no idea what it was about, but Klas persuaded me to go there, she says. Somewhere, on a airplane between Arlanda (Stockholm's airport) and Heathrow, And She Closed Her Eyes started to take form. Then came a period when Stina commuted between Stockholm and London. But the planned co-oporation with 4AD finally ended and they had to start all over again. SN - The most important thing that came out from these trips were that I came in contact with a lot of music that I hadn't heard before. Not least some things from 4AD. And, quite right, she brought Red House Painters second album - with Katy Song set on repeat - to the photoshoot for POP and during the walk to the cafe a couple of blocks away, she talked herself warm for This Mortal Coil. SN - Sometimes, at least for very short moments, I can still get sad that the cooperation didn't happen, she says after a while. I don't think that 4AD realised what they were missing. But then they hadn't heard And She Closed Her Eyes. Long, long after the debut album was released in Sweden, it came out in both England, Japan and USA. The critique was brilliant. But, after hearing the follow-up album, the debut feels conventional. The earlier take-off in Rickie Lee Jones, jazz and Stina's own fairy- tale tinted stories on reality has been replaced by a number of musical references. There is still jazz somewhere in the core of things. But it isn't the academical school-jazz. The only thing that really remains is the jazz feeling for melancholy. The title song is partly accompanied by rain alone, which says quite a bit about the feeling the listener falls in. SN - That very song was written and recorded when everything else was finished. The record was completely finished, mixed and done. I just sat in a corner of the studio and recorded it. It felt really good. Besides, it was a good title on the album. It has a very open meaning. There are like three dots before and after and you can place it in any context. What's it about ? SN - It's about a couple that are sitting in an open-air restaurant, he is much older than she is, they don't really know each other that well and they are seeing each other for the first time in a very long time. That her face gets wet when they meet can be because it is raining or she is crying. When it is raining in the song, they sit silent. They don't have very much to say to each other. They have a silent agreement that she must not fall in love with him. When she says that she has had to struggle not to fall in love with him, he changes his mind. She doesn't answer him. He loses his guarded style and is about to lose control. Simply because she seems disconcerned. It sounds like the synopsis to a French movie when she tells it. It sounds like it could be about someone else. But when you hear the record, when Stina's voice in just a few seconds has crawled into your sub-conscious, it is all about yourself. Just like all pop music should be. SN - When I started to record I only knew that I didn't want to work with Johan Ekelund again. For a while I was considering Talk Talk's producer. Because I've thought that I one day would like to work with a producer that has very strong visions, it worked excellent on Suzanne Vega's latest. Finally she decided to work with Erik Holmberg, who she met when she appeared on Dive's album, almost two years ago. SN - He seemed to understand what I wanted to do. But I liked him mostly because he was so young. Stina Nordenstam is 24 years old. She is still very short and is very pleased with her album. SN - Jon Hassell is on the record. It's one of very few known guests. He received a lot of money and appeared only on one song. He showed up in a very weird cowboy-outfit. Popsicle is on a few tracks and Andreas sings on So This Is Goodbye. I love his voice. It's so personal. The rest of the band plays of a few songs as well. Those who I had around me at that time probably didn't quite realise how good Popsicle is. But I felt that they were so fucking good myself, that I didn't care if anyone else thought that they were grumpy. Stina does as she wants. When the Swedish people consumes Rebecka Tornqvist breakfast-tv jazz, Stina Nordenstam's more personal, slightly eccentric, songs and her melancholy vision feels incredibly important. The only artist that I can think of that fits in her idea-world is Icelandic singer Bjork who's album Debut was chosen as the best of 1993 by POP. And She Closed Her Eyes is even better. I promise. SN - I think that everything is about making it as clear as possible. Sometimes you can spend ages trimming details. And then some things disappear. But some songs on And She Closed Her Eyes felt right after recorded like... perfect. There it was! But that doesn't mean that I can't allow myself to be subtle. So I am convinced that many of those who listen to the record will misunderstand me anyway. So This Is Goodbye is one of the songs that felt completely perfect when I heard the result for the first time, and I imagine that the girls that listen to it will think of it as very sad and maybe even a bit angry. It's also a song that cannot be misinterpreted. When I ask Stina to talk about the lyrics of the album, she has problems. SN - I have a strong resentment of hanging myself out like that. But I think that's rather understandable. If you're a depressive person, you don't sit and laugh at jokes. Just like it feels right now, that I have to make up half-lies to talk about the lyrics. She tries anyway. SN - When Debbie's Back From Texas is about a person that I don't want to talk about. Anyway, Debbie is an Englishman's ex-wife who comes from Texas. And he imagines that when she gets back to England, life will return to the shape it had before. But he really doesn't want that to happen. The story is fictitious. And not self- lived. The places and the names are true. Now I can't say anything more about that. View From a Spire ? SN - It's about a young woman who has died somewhere in town. There's a possessed love story somewhere in the background. Most of my lyrical ideas has in a way a true background. Even this one. Crimes ? SN - Love again. I don't want to say anything more. Fireworks ? SN - A pure unhappy love story. Little Star ? SN - A suicide with a confession in Latin performed by a boy's choir. It will be released as asingle. But then it is finished. The rest of the songs are left unspoken for. SN - I think, contrary to the most, that lyrics are more personal in English. I could probably not get as much said if I sang in Swedish. Now I'm forced to concentrate on the story this way. I think the result will be more obvious this way. Another reason for the English is a certain disinterest in Sweden. Not that she plans to conquer the world. It's just so. SN - I have much easier to relate to things that happen outside Sweden. Everything you experience outside Sweden is so peeled off, you're just a character. No matter what you do or what happens, you'll be rid of prejudicial opinions. It was someone who once wondered if I had any need to obtain redress, that's why I wrote music. But that isn't true at all. I have never had any need to impress or demand some kind of revenge on those who I grew up with. No matter if it's about my parents, teachers or old school friends. SN - Creativity shall always come from some kind of suffering. It seems to be some kind of rule that it's supposed to be that way. And I don't understand it. I only know that I have a very strong need to express myself. That's the strongest urge I have. I always have to explain what I mean, what I want. If I argue with someone, I don't have to get that person to agree with me. I only need to make him or her to understand. That's enough. I'm scared if I can't get any order in my chaos. The chaos has to be expressable. She cares very little what kind of attention the record makes. SN - There are very few people who's appreciation I really want. I mean, what someone in USA thinks about it two years from now doesn't matter. For me, the door was shut as soon as the record was finished. And now it's too late. If you are truly happy with what you've done, it is not until a very long time later that you start to care about what others will think. Just when you've recorded a song and brings it on a tape and listens to it in a walkman, that's enough. You love yourself right then and that is actually enough. For some reason. The comparison with Ricky Lee Jones, that has haunted her for years, is a chapter that could be considered closed the same day that And She Closed her Eyes reach the record shops. SN - I think that an artist only has a certain lifespan to a listener. There are exceptions, like Bowie and U2, artists that demand that the audience must follow them when they insist on turning their music 360 degrees. But if you are talking about more personal music, there will finally be a nostalgic shimmer around it, something familiar. And it can never be like the first two-three albums with them that you loved. Whatever they do, it will never get some new colours. You have to somehow try to keep a certain naive feeling to that you liked very much when you were younger. But when I listened to the new Rickey Lee Jones album I was mostly glad that she existed, that she still was recording music. And I played her version of Rebel Rebel eighteen times and haven't played it since. I didn't play Pop Pop, her previous album, at all. But then it came out when everybody was nagging me about sounding like her. And She Closed Her Eyes seems to have been written and recorded under very concentrated forms, Stina seems to have turned off every other potential source of influence. SN - In a way. I have periods with differing needs and demands of incoming and outgoing signals. When I read books I don't want to do anything else at all. I have periods when I take in things and my own language, my own expression is completely silent. When I think or read it has to be very calm inside of me. The opposite are those periods when I talk myself or record that I have written. At that time I am forced to be extroverted. Translation contributed by Jonas H. Thanks to Hiro and Marvyn for the Stina site... Edited by Jeff Keibel Scarborough, ON CANADA redshift@interlog.com