THE TRAVELS

INFO The Travels represents a signpost in the continuing journey that is the songs of Berlin-based artist Molly Nilsson. Starting out by hand-dubbing CDrs and forging a singular path in the global pop underground, Nilsson™s art has grown to the extent where hers is a precise songwriting devoid of unnecessary flourish. Her songs are perfect silhouettes of feelings everyone shares but that few can articulate with such heart-rending, icy pathos. Journeys offer change - the possibility of renewal - and accordingly on The Travels Molly Nilsson™s resonant voice is found curling around a new sense of optimism and wide-eyed discovery that was only alluded to in her previous work. Songs like šDear Life› might be spiked with a barbed sense of the dejected, but the presiding feeling is one of optimism, of being in love with life despite a shield of cynicism. šDirty Fingers› brings a melancholy recognisable from previous work but with an incessant beat and ecstatic underpinning it becomes apparent that a new force is at play here. In case the listener missed it, šThe Power Ballad› brings an endearing, sincerity to proceedings that also offers a tantalising question: can you be sceptical about love but still be bewitched? On her 5th long-player, Nilsson™s perspective is challenged and manipulated by changes in environment and psychological space: like any other traveller the protagonist brings their own set of values and emotional states to new places, colouring them with a wash of subjectivity. Like any other traveller Molly Nilsson reacts to her environment and shares her unique version of it to other people. Based loosely on Marco Polo™s šTravels› and reading like a map of the protagonist™s geographical and inner journey, The Travels reveals new places and new emotions that are never the same to the beholder. Nilsson™s art is in turning this subjectivity into a cloak that almost anyone can don for the trip