Our 2015 high scorer returns… what could go wrong?

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[4.89]

Katherine St Asaph: No no no no no no no, just no — I do not listen to Susanne Sundfør for stodgy piano ballads one step away from Adele. If Ten Love Songs turns out to be Sundfør’s Love’s Victory March — dark, propulsive, world-destroying grandeur cast aside indefinitely for vintage-repro slowcore — I will be livid.
[3]

Alfred Soto: I hated this the moment when her voice ascended in the line, “You’re a teasing little twister.” I don’t listen to Susanne Sundfør for lovingly vacant valentines — when has she ever given the impression that she wishes she had a lover?
[3]

Ramzi Awn: Sundfør’s textbook training is impressive, and “Undercover” sounds great from another room — like a lost Kate Bush recording. But on another listen, the imitation/flattery is on the nose to the point of distraction, and the lyrics are a banal rendering of the nuance of love.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: This feels as if it is floating, with nothing to tether it to the sullied world of the living. As Susanne sings of undercover love, the shimmering piano keys and cavernous voices build until they tower over her, surrounding and raising her higher and higher into the atmosphere until it dissipates.
[7]

Peter Ryan: Not counting “Reincarnation”, this is about as close to “innocent romantic sounds” or “Dolly Parton-inspired” as one could reasonably expect, given the album’s title and who its purveyor is. Sundfør usually installs a couple of pseudo-subdued pieces on each album to offset their extroverted siblings, but their typical stateliness is missing here — for all its profound dejection at the outset, “Undercover” transmutes itself into homespun transcendence. Nina Persson-Scandinavian-slide guitars languidly uncoil the first two-thirds’ tension into that extended haze of an outtro, Sundfør gliding off on a pair of golden wings she’s materialized in under three minutes. All signs point to it being a fake-out — “innocent romantic sounds” are to be mixed in with “industrial and dry” ones, her inspiration playlist — but if so, it’s a glorious one.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: What the fuck is this, a self-produced 1973 private press women’s music album? Well, no, because the vast majority of women’s music was much more interesting than Sundfør’s “I’m singing with (mostly) just piano accompaniment so you can hear how much I mean it” bullshit here. If you’re looking for some superb, intimate music, seek out Cris Williamson’s landmark 1975 album The Changer and the Changed, and run as far away from this as you can.
[1]

Will Adams: I imagine this will be more powerful in context of the album — something like the first minute of “Memorial” before the power ballad drums fire up and the strings sweep in. But there’s plenty of power in “Undercover” on its own. The ornate arrangement is arresting enough, but then the song pans out to reveal a cathedral’s worth of emotion. The sudden declaration of “It wouldn’t even matter!” sounds like Sundfør breaking through the surface of the choir mass around her. As always, it’s her voice, her commitment to the theatricality of it all, that puts it over the edge.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: As an opener, or an interlude, or part of a movement this would be fine (it would fit between “Kamikaze” and “Memorial” on Ten Love Songs), but it’s thin meat while I bay for a full-blooded opus to follow-up one of the greatest albums of my lifetime, or anyone’s lifetime.
[5]

Iain Mew: The kind of insubstantial song balancing old and new that’s perfect for piquing my interest for a new album — familiarly uneasy lyrics; a new wistful warmth; that pedal steel! — but which I will never listen to on its own again.
[5]