Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We have found ways to be able to travel to distant and secluded lands and experience cultures that at one time we had to rely on the sincere words of guides and the opinions of others to make our imagination and creativity soar, we have found the way to shorten time and the miles between us so that what may have taken us months and a hefty price tag to conquer, instead takes us hours, a day out of our lives in which we can spend the voyage thinking about the emotional response to the facial expression of the one we love, to the one we say hello to; and ultimately the one we will meet again with hugs and smiles, tears and the courage of the goodbye at The Airport.

Instead of the one fantastic voyage, we now make several, dozens of journeys by plane, we spend our time in waiting lounges and departures halls looking for the connection that makes the trip both a pleasure and a melancholic discomfort, and for the traveller to whom the world is full of people they want to meet, loved ones they rightly want to ensure are safe and well, the airport has become the symbol of the weight that binds them to the world.

Lena Anderssen is no stranger to the beauty and heartbreak of emotions when it comes to spending time exchanging greetings and trading the tears of regretful bon voyages, the sense of remoteness in her life from her childhood in The Faroes, to the simmering and sweltering approachability and closeness she has forged as she has progressed and extended her sublime talent, as she continues to extol the beauty of her craft, Lena has found the song that sits perfectly in those times we have to wait, when saying goodbye is just too much to bare, and the sense of impending welcome is overwhelming to hold.

The song is one of melody, of the melancholy address wrapped up in the clothes of hope and the charm of engagement. However, this is no deceit, for as with the nostalgia that the song searches for as the memory of love and experiences fade, melancholy is the reason we continue to strive to travel onwards, for it is a passion, a merriment of the soul which is grounded in truth and not the falsehoods of capricious exuberance in which all is smiles and is one-sided excessive invention.

Lena Anderssen returns to the mind of the music lover with a tremendous single, upbeat, but mindful of its purpose, melancholic but triumphant in its delivery. The Airport is after all just a stepping-stone to the next chapter, and with a new album out later in the year, Ms. Anderssen stamps the passport of what is to come with honour.

Lena Anderssen releases her sixth album, State Of The Land in September 2021.

Ian D. Hall