Norwegian musicians Stian Westerhus and Maja S.K. Ratkje present a suite of songs on All Losses Are Restored (CRISPIN GLOVER RECORDS AVON1CGR152), with lyrics built on the works of William Shakespeare, either derived from the sonnets or plucked from certain plays, including Hamlet and Macbeth. They first did it at a jazz festival in Oslo in 2019 where the positive audience reception encouraged them to assay this CD release of their material. The acoustic instrumentation – guitar, fiddle, pump organ – is nice and simple, quite inventive at times, and the combination of the two singing voices has moments of mild frisson. I love many of Ratkje’s projects, and anything to which she turns her considerable talents is bound to succeed at some level. Stian Westerhus, not so much; his mannered performing style has never quite landed with me, especially not the lugubrious Kave LP on Arjuna Music from 2020. All Losses Are Restored might work as a formal experiment in song form, but you never get the sense that Shakespeare’s meanings or intentions are conveyed, or even understood, by the two singers; in vain we wait for an original insight, or a striking illumination of the text. It seems more like a sterile exercise in reworking a cultural legacy. Vinyl version also exists. (23/02/2024)
