Juni Habel exists in a space rife with contradictions. The world is quite often overpowering, yet her music is, at its heart, delicate and effortless. As Habel explains, “We always aim to capture effortlessness, but the way of getting there is anything but effortless.” Evergreen In Your Mind captures a fundamental stillness at odds with the places where we live and work. Hiking in the woods and wilds of her Norwegian home, she attempted to find the stillness leading to true connection. Beyond the noise there lie pathways to experience life on another level.
Stillness and passion are intimately related, while remaining polar opposites. Desirous of both, we work so hard that often we find neither. The song ‘Evergreen In Your Mind’ suggests hiding from the real world, doesn’t necessarily lead in the right direction, “Oh what a life/ When you were here/ Fleeing back to the state of mind/ Returning back to when we were.” Caught in an endless tug of war between the modern world and the natural one, the suggestion is that there is a place in your head where you can still cling to the beautiful.
Musical passages flutter into view, replaced by other notes and instruments in a subtle dance. ‘Another High’ opens with a single acoustic guitar, yet along the way, gentle blends from synth to saw emerge from the background in a delicate dance of subtle colors. Amidst the splendor of the countryside Habel finds herself admitting, “But you know just what I want/ Know just what I need/ Know just what I want/ In another time.”
One of the main threads of the album lies in Habel’s acoustic guitar. Intertwining with the various threads of bass, synths, strings, saw and more by producer Stian Skaaden, they form a palette of shades that enhance these eleven tracks. ‘Pearl Cloud Song’ opens with notes of guitar and saw before other colours enter the gentle reverie. Instead of the usual percussion, the use of table legs and other effects add a playful sense to the proceedings.
Conjuring up the ghost of Nick Drake can never be considered a negative, especially the way her fingers dance around the guitar strings on ‘Stand So Still’. A second largely instrumental track, ‘Gitarhum’, comes alive in moments when abstract counterpoints offer a rejoinder to the stringed instrument and the hushed tones of Habel’s wordless vocals. Such is the mystery and magic that comes into play on her songs.
Juni Habel’s music creates a landscape that luxuriates in the stillness existing in those moments when the chaos of the real world slips away. Evergreen In Your Mind is not an antidote to the modern world. Rather it is a way of stilling the noise and finding moments of clarity existing just outside the scope of modern life.