Ellen Andrea Wang - Blank Out

The Guardian 80

(Jazzland)

Norway’s classy young double bassist and vocalist Ellen Andrea Wang has a burgeoning singer-songwriting life, as well as a role as leader of the ambient-jazz quartet Pixel and working on a side project with drums star Manu Katché. Jazz listeners might balk at seven vocal tracks – but Wang’s captivating voice (she has been compared to singers as different as Rickie Lee Jones and Swedish pop-folk sisters First Aid Kit; Kate Bush or Joanna Newsom could also join the list) has a big star’s promise, and Andreas Ulvo’s jazzily inventive acoustic piano and Erland Dahlen’s seismic drumming endlessly repaint the backdrop. Wang mixes terseness and a spooky ethereality on the immigration-interview satire Peace Prize, hops registers above the heavy groove of Bad Blood, wittily tone-bends her way through Electric (“I’ve got an electric conscience / I’ve got an electric mind / I’ve got an electric boyfriend”). But her majestic Charlie Haden-like bass intro to chorister-vocal atmospherics on Accord De Paris is a reminder of the talented Wang’s jazz-bass power. She is a real find.