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Magnet.
Few people in Australia would be aware of the existence of singer-songwriter Even Johansen, better known as Magnet. While well known both in his birthplace of Norway and adopted home in the UK, he is a relative unknown over this side of the globe due in no small part to the small volume releases of all his previous albums. But thanks to a recent signing to Mushroom, Magnet's latest album 'On Your Side' is freely available locally. If you haven't heard Magnet, perhaps think Thom Yorke fronting The Doves with a bit of Ed Harcourt thrown in... er yeah.
"I'm excited about coming to Australia, more than touring has excited me for quite some time, actually," Johansen enthuses. "I've never been to Australia, but I've seen and heard lots of stuff about Australia, about what its like. My impression of Australians is that they are quite similar to what the people in Norway are like. They don't like to take themselves too seriously and aren't at all uptight. Compared to the UK, they're less pompous, and that suits me right down to the ground. I'm looking forward to meeting some like-minded people on the other side of the world.
"It's always exciting to go and play to people, you never really know how they're going to react or if they're going to react at all. It's always a bit of a challenge to convince them that what you've got has a right to be there. That's quite exciting, there's not many better feelings for a musician than when you create a reaction. It's quite a long way to travel to see if it's going to work out or what though. With any luck we'll be all right."
With 'On Your Side', Magnet has found himself in rather a lot more demand than he had expected. "It's been a weird thing actually. When I've released albums before, the fuss seems to go on for about two months and that's it. But with this one, it's taken longer to get going but its still living and going. Its longer shelf life is a bit of a mixed blessing:, its difficult to go away and write new stuff when you're having to go away and go places."
Magnet's 'On Your Side' includes a brilliant cover of Bob Dylan's
Lay Lady Lay, featuring Mercury Music Award nominee Gemma
Hayes. "I'm not a very big Bob Dylan fan, but I love that song
in particular. It's a beautiful song, positive, very expectant,
and there's not really any conclusion, you don't know whether
she indeed stays the night or not. I have to say that Bob Dylan
is a good lyricist; he only needed three and a half minutes
to say what I needed fifty to get across. I just liked the song
and it was a perfect song for Gemma to duet with me on. We all
met up in London for one day and put it down. It's always nice
to do something different: recording is hard labour so it was
good just to kick back with a glass of wine and put something
together with friends. Music is such an intimate thing that
if you're not comfortable in your underwear with these people
talking about really serious subjects, then you shouldn't be
recording with them.
"You're always doing something when you're listening to music, whether its thinking about love or just doing something, and that music's always going to be the soundtrack to your life in a way. It's a very powerful time machine, all you have to do is hear the same song and the smell you were smelling at the time will come back even if its ten years later. That's it, the music that doesn't force its way down your throat and leaves something up to you, to make your own relationship with the song. And that takes away the ownership of the music from whoever wrote the song, making it the ultimate way to communicate with people, because what you're saying becomes theirs. I prefer that people make their own minds up rather than telling people what to think, or telling people what to feel."
Indy Lin
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Magnet plays at the Grace Emily on Sun 7 March with Jamie Hutchings (Bluebottle Kiss) & Greg Atkinson (Big Heavy Stuff).
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