ALBUM REVIEWS

Hummingbird, Go!
by Theresa Andersson

This is the fifth release of Theresa Andersson. Each album is different from the previous. Her albums have ranged from jazz to americana to pop. Her live shows show a different side of the singer, where she truly lets go and rocks out a lot harder than she has shown yet on disc.

Her newest album is a departure from what she has done so far. Her last album was the self named ep that came out right after Katrina. The hurricane actually stopped the work on the album she was working on and the singer and her record company wanted to get something out for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Theresa is one of the top sellers at the record tent at the Fest. So they took what they had done for the album and made it an ep. And created one of the best for the year of 2006. That album was closer to Americana than her previous work.

Her newest album followed the same sort of trajectory of that one. For this year's Jazz Fest she again wasn't finished with the full album, so she released an ep "I The River" in time for the Festival. The full album "Hummingbird, Go" has finally been released this week. Of the five songs from the ep only 3 appear on the album. Anyone expecting Theresa to continue on the path towards Americana will be disappointed, but she has crafted something completely different and good.

For this album this was pretty much a one woman show. Theresa pretty much plays all the instruments on this album, which consists of the normal ones but also bottles and whatever else she could find in her kitchen to carry a tune. She recorded the album in her kitchen. Fellow Swedish poets Ane Brun and Jessica Faust supply the lyrics to Theresa's music and the whole thing was mixed by fellow Swede Tobias Froberg.

The album is a pop masterpiece. The songs are fun and sing a long. This is different from her latest work and from her previous live shows, but it is very good. Her singing has never sounded better and the music is a wonder. The songs mix the pop of her native country's group Abba with New Orleans and Amerciana to create a psychedelic potpourri. On "God's Highway" she moves closest to her previous style of Americana. The opener "Na Na Na" is an otherwordly gem that would have made a great summer hit.

Buy the album, and if she tours near you catch her live show, it's amazing watching her re create the one woman act of recording the album live.