Review by Even Ormbostad, Norway
After hearing “Monument” repeatedly before I finally managed to sleep, I woke up again early today, still with a sense of enthusiasm and joy after the night’s release.
After brewing coffee, filling it on the thermos and putting the egg in the pot, I sat down on the sofa with my coffee cup and turned on my laptop. I went to Youtube and put on the new KEiiNO song again.
I had decided in advance that this time I would start listening to it again with very critical ears.
Basically, I am so shaken by this intro of the song. Fred drags you into the cold tundra already after 3 seconds, and when Alexandra enters and puts us into life’s big questions already in the first stanzas of the song, then I’m really caught up in a sense of a historical landscape of our existence, up here in the Nordic countries. I’m listening and I have goosebumps. I am proud of being a Northerner.
This is a song with such a depth you rarely hear in a pop song that lasts three minutes. It feels epic and in the final phase, it feels almost like a hymn. An ecstatic scream from ancient times to the present life in seconds.
KEiiNO has never had a more dense soundscape than the one we listen to here. A soundscape that you can dive into and constantly find new excellent pieces that fit so
perfectly together.
Textually, this is a diamond that has been cut to make it shine for a long time.
I do not need a victory
I do not need a monument
I live on in my universe
of a minor symphony