Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The U.K. holds Joanne Shaw Taylor very close to its Rock/Blues heart, America does the same with Beth Hart and seemingly from out of the cultured wilds of Norway, Christina Skjolberg is ready to cause the same natural sentiments across Scandinavia and beyond and if her debut album Come and Get it is anything to go by.
A lot of women can play the Rock Blues genre, for that nobody should even bat an eye in surprise; some play it so fantastically that they can play it better than their male counterparts and even then the eyelid should not flicker but like Joanne Shaw Taylor and Beth Hart, Ms Skjolberg rocks the house apart. A bulldozer and several jackhammers could not take the foundations apart any quicker than the ruthlessly beautiful, almost heavenly demonic sound that Ms Skjolberg employs throughout alongside her band, Tore Slattsveen on bass, Miri Miettinen on drums and Harri Taitonen on keyboard.
Come and Get It, well perhaps there is no better enticingly appropriate name, for that is exactly what fans of the genre should do. The abandonment of the office keyboard, the putting away of the road sweepers brush and the Presidential box of tricks in which war is fought should all be placed out of reach and Come and Get It should be purchased with the same glee as whenever Joanne Shaw Taylor releases an album of high intensity.
Norway for such a long time, arguably wrongly, was the butt of jokes aimed at its music output and whilst many still think of those days if they hear the words Norway and music put together, what comes out of the lands of Fjords and snow, of green lush meadows and of Scandinavian pride is something incredible. The Folk genre thrives because it is superb, the Metal/Rock arena because it grabs the listener by deep seated emotion and in Christina Skjolberg* the Blues is yet another field in which Norway will never fear having the disrespectful tag of Nil Points hurled in its direction again.
With songs such as Runaway, Bullet, Moving On, the fantastic and gutsy I’m Back and perhaps the fitting Mrs Funk being captured for all time on the album, the album moves along at such a pace that there is no time to relax, the listener is thrown headlong into the path of Ms. Skjolberg’s* weighty chords that the only option is to grab hold as best you can and grin for all its worth.
A superb debut, Ms, Skjolberg is no longer a secret for the Norwegians to enjoy and covet.
Ian D. Hall