Stay Under the Stars

Album Review

Teitur (last name not used: Lassen) is a singer/songwriter who, early in his life, left the northern European Faroe Islands and now spends most of his time in Denmark, which largely owns the (mostly) independent Faroes. Teitur is largely independent himself, particularly since leaving the confines of the major Universal label for the Arlo and Betty label he shares with his manager (the album is licensed to Equator Music in the U.S.). Singing in English, he released his debut, Poetry & Aeroplanes, in 2003 to mostly thumbs-up reviews, and one track, "One and Only," founds its way into a couple of film soundtracks, notably the slight comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Slight is also an apt description of Stay Under the Stars, but it's not necessarily a derogatory one. Teitur's songs have a breezy wispiness underneath their melancholy chord changes — think a happier Nick Drake or a modern-day Al Stewart — and his sparing use of orchestration and fanciful keyboard colorations make the songs seem lighter on the surface than they actually are. Sometimes Teitur likes to play his words against his sounds: On "I Run the Carousel" he begins, accompanied by glockenspiel and other mixed keys, by stating flatly that he does indeed operate said carnival ride, "with horses and Tinkerbell late night by the canal." It's only when he confesses that "Sometimes it tortures me, the envy and the jealousy, but I never panic," that it's clear we're not in Jonathan Richman country here. On occasion, Teitur does turn up the volume, but never too much, and when you expect it the most, as on his cover of the Jerry Lee Lewis oldie "Great Balls of Fire," he turns that expectation on its head by going practically baroque with it.