TEITUR - LET THE DOG DRIVE HOME

1) Feel Good; 2) God, I Have So Many Things to Tell You; 3) Waverly Place; 4) Freight Train; 5) Betty Hedges; 6) You Never Leave LA; 7) Stormy Weather; 8) Fly on the Wall; 9) Let the Dog Drive Home; 10) Very Careless People; 11) When I Had It All; 12) All I Remember from Last Night Is You

Cosy, comfortable and gentle singer/songwriter melodies in a certified Scandinavian style.

A long time back there was a short period of roughly 3-4 years where one of my sisters gave me a seemingly random album as a birthday present, with little explanation or context given why she had thought it would make a good gift for me. Let the Dog Drive Home was one of those gifts and I had never heard of Teitur before, but I didn't need to wade into the credits or Wikipedia to figure out he was Scandinavian. There's a particular kind of je ne sais quoi that Nordic artist embed into a number of universal umbrella styles and so even though the gently sung acoustic singer/songwriter musings of Teitur Lassen are something you could hear all over the world, it bears the kind of casual cosiness and friendly intimacy that seems to call the cold North its home. Think Magnet or Jens Lekman, to name a few - Lassen fits right in that same company.

Let the Dog Drive Home is a great example how a skilled chef doesn't need an original recipe to create something that hits the mark. Lassen's chosen sound is tried and tested but loses none of its charm as a result of its familiarity, because everything is so in its right place that it's practically immaculate. He can write a potent melody to build a memorable song around and add the exact right level of flair into the arrangements to make the song pop out without ever losing its precious homeliness, his soft voice gently wades between the instruments in the most inviting manner and the lyrics offer enough distinct personality that it makes paying attention to them worth it to catch the occasional line of wit and insight. The sentiment is often wistful and bittersweet but played out in a manner that makes it downright comforting, and the soft production is there to make it a snug home to sit for a while in. It's almost irritatingly perfect, like someone had been taking lessons how to write this kind of music and then holed up in a studio for months to deliver their graduation thesis - but you can't really hold it against the album either because of how well it sucks you in. Teitur is a very skilled chef who's mastered his chosen cuisine, and it's comfort food that's simply plain pleasant to spend time with.

Just as simply, what's given this longevity is nothing more or less than Lassen's songwriting pen. His hooks and melodies can be massive but they're played with a casual, light-handed touch that almost hides their strength and it only clicks when you go back to the songs and realise just how strongly you recall how each song flows. Let the Dog Drive Home spends most of its time with intimate ballads and dinner party mid-tempos but Lassen is really very good at them and it doesn't matter how many of them he stacks one after another, they all distinguish themselves in some way: of particular note are the slowly awakening "Freight Train", the gentle shuffle of "Waverly Place", the hopeful and yearning sky-reaching of "Betty Hedges" and the widescreen slow dances of "All I Remember from Last Night Is You", which showcase both the creator's and the album's strengths very neatly and may as well be a litmus test to how well someone will vibe with the album. There's often a little surprise hidden within the songs too, like how "Stormy Weather" suddenly interjects noise guitar walls that somehow work as part of the album's overall sonic tapestry, and the couple of side tracts that take a more major break from the general proceedings are tactfully split across the album, distinct enough to jump up from the tracklist but not so much that they'd feel like they're in the wrong company. The bouncy title track in particular instantly lights up the room as it arrives late to the album and injects a hitherto unheard level of freewheeling energy into the proceeds, building up to a giant chorus that's about as anthemic as the album gets. The single status of "You Never Leave LA" is immediately obvious from its thick drum beat (once again, relative to everything else) guiding the song through its gently soaring chorus and fluttering woodwinds, and it's arguably the single strongest standalone example of the album's qualities, and the invisible groove of "God, I Have So Many Things to Tell You" that smoothly snaps forward with its programmed drums shows that Lassen doesn't need all these lush arrangements behind him to get his point across.

But it all comes back to that comfort of it all. Let the Dog Drive Home is an easy album to put on: chilled, smooth and approachable at any time, and that's precisely why it so quickly wraps its finger around you. The particular sounds and ideas that it's adopted are like a comfort blanket in music, both adept at being cosy backgroud music during a quiet evening or as a more focused retreat when things need to step down a notch. I think that kind of approachability is what's particularly unique to singer/songwriters from the Nordic regions, ironic as it is given the stereotype of cold and withdrawn personalities there, and I have to admit that too strikes a chord with someone whose roots are from there. Its homeliness is its greatest strength, but the rating wouldn't be this high if the songs weren't so good that you wanted to specifically reach out for this album instead of the countless others who do the same thing under different voices. I've remained ignorant of what else lies in Teitur's discography and for a while treated this as a nice little collection quirk that's remained in the shelf because of the personal background behind its appearance, but the more it's becoming clear how well it all acts out the more I'm starting to think that maybe I should actually look into a bit further what lies outside this album. Give me a shout in a handful of years and maybe I'll need to revisit this review after binging through Teitur's other works.

Physically: Inside the delightfully vivid yellow digipak (albeit with some sun damage on the spine courtesy of the great sun room incident of 2019) there's two booklets. One is a fold-out poster featuring all the lyrics; the other is a big booklet full of illustrations starring the dog from the cover, with a page or two dedicated to each song with some of the lyrics depicted in art. It's really charming and I love it. There's also a doodle of a tombstone with "Compact Disc, b. 1982" written on it - given how this format so well enables little things like the extra booklet, I can't help but think the lack of a death year is very much intentional.