Sunday Spotlight: Moddi

This is the spot where I introduce bands and artists that tickle me most. This time I'm talking about Moddi, the very multitalented fella from Norway.

Pål Moddi Knutsen (or as he goes by his stage name, Moddi) is a singer-songwriter from the island of Senja, Norway.

I first stumbled upon his music about six months ago, shortly after moving to Norway myself. I was scanning the databases of Google and Spotify for any locally made music and sure enough, his name popped up: Senja is an island located basically next door from where I've settled. I see the sun set behind its snow covered mountains nearly every day.

Even though he was touring the UK at that time I was simply amazed by how his name had never caught my attention before, back when I was treading the ground of my native Finland. Because the truth is that everything about this guy seems well worth looking up to. After a quick study I learned that he's not only a self-taught musician, but a political and a social activist as well:

• In 2010 he refused nomination for a 1,000,000 Norwegian krone grant (123,000 US dollars, or 116,000 Euros) by Statoil (a Norwegian oil and gas company) on environmental grounds, stating "I don't want Statoil for a friend. Who on earth accepts a friendship just because you get paid a million krones for it?"
• His song En sang om fly, from the album Kæm va du?, addresses the dilemma of harming the climate through travelling to spread a message to save it. In 2014, in collaboration with InterRail, he organised "The Train Tour", a two-week tour through Europe entirely on rails. It went through France, Germany and the Czech Republic.
• In January 2014 he cancelled a scheduled concert in Tel Aviv, Israel, because he did not want to be taken to support the Israeli expansion of settlements in the West Bank. Following the cancellation he released the single Eli Geva, a song about the Israeli officer who refused to lead his forces into battle in 1982.

I applaud the spinal column that is his backbone. Exactly the sort of role modelling I look for in my music.

Getting to describe his music. There's a nice balance of instruments (such as accordion and cello) in a sparse acoustic soundscape of very mellowed out, unhurried tunes that'll demand your full attention. They don't particularly raise hope in the listener, but neither do they leave you feeling dispersed: to quote Folk Radio, delicate guitar-playing and [Moddi’s] informal tone make for oddly comforting melancholy. I'd like to be able to pinpoint his voice as familiar to someone else's, but all comparison escapes me. It can be piercing, to say the least, and it carries the songs beautifully into the magnificent stories that they are; each one like a work of art on its own.

But it's also precisely the sort of music that I most enjoy throwing on when the mood is set to late night chill or the need is to tune out magnificently. It doesn't hurt if the music is made by beautiful human beings at the same time.

Finally, picture this: you move to a small island on the outer coast of everything, literally a thousand miles from home, relatives or friends. A beautiful gem, but where there are less people living in the entire village than there were in the mere apartment complex you set forth from. You don't know anyone around, hardly speak their language even. Thrilled at the prospect, however, you begin settling to both your new life and the new surroundings - an environment certainly so very opposite from the big cities and the concrete jungles you've spent your life growing up and living in. And as you do so, the one song you come across to declares:

They say home is the place where your heart is, 

then I am home now, though I am far away. 

For so long I've let deep forests guard it, 

and now it's begging me to stay. 

And I’m trying my best to be tough, 

to pretend I am strong and can siphon it off. 

But I’m not who I wanted to be, 

in my heart I belong in a house by the sea. 

That is an excerpt from Moddi's House by the Sea and it was my initial contact with him. Although I imagine the song to be written from a reversed point of view, hearing it (at the particular epoch) certainly made my settling to the previously mentioned situation somewhat easier to manage, and will therefore most likely always hold a special meaning in my life. So thank you, takk, Mr. Knutsen. I look forward to hopefully seeing you in show one day. I'll be the +30-year old kid in the front row, probably wearing a Danko Jones t-shirt and giving you the thumbs up.

Hilsen,
The Seldom Seen Kid


Discography:
Random Skywriting (self released EP, 2007)
Rubato – split LP with Einar Stray (EP, 2008)
Live at Parkteateret (self released live album, 2009)
Floriography (2010)
Rubbles (EP, 2010)
Set the House on Fire (2013)
Kæm va du? (2013)
Live at Jakob Church of Culture EP (live EP, 2014)

Moddi that I listened to while blogging this. [via Spotify]