Two Minute Interview: Jessica Sligter

I fell for Nordic music long before setting foot in Scandinavia. Visits to Norway helped me keep up with new artists for a while, but my most recent find wasn't mine at all. Friends happened to hear an album while hanging out at Oslo's Sound of Mu and, thinking of me, tracked down a copy before heading back to the States. I was flattered and impressed. In my second Two Minute Interview for Where and Back, I asked Jessica Sligter, the young singer and songwriter who performs under the pseudonym Jæ, about the journeys music has taken her on. 

1. As someone who spends her time in Oslo, Amsterdam, and (occasionally) New York, how has travel influenced your music? There is a magic to things that are new to you. I'm addicted to that magic. The past four years I've been dividing my time between Oslo and Amsterdam, and then I've been a month here, a month there in Reykjavik or the US. Otherwise there was of course also touring in Western Europe and Scandinavia. When you travel you are on a constant high that influences what you do and how you do it. All my life I have been fascinated with the different worlds that people live in. The little cells that can differ so very much from each other. Each have their own character, their rules, their patterns. I like to move around in that landscape, and learn about people, learn about the diversity and the possibilities that life holds. So when I travel, I am in a constant state of receptiveness. On the other hand, that state can exhaust you, and you start to miss what you know well and feels safe: your house, your city, a language you understand without effort, your friends. Sometimes you get lonely and vulnerable.
2. Have you experienced something marvelous, funny, or tragic in your travels? Oh, many things! For me it's mostly the people and their characters. And local foods. I continue to be amazed by the wonders of food.
3. What are some of the most memorable places you've performed, and why?  Badgerhaus in Raleigh, North Carolina. The house of a drone-musician—I forget his name—that looked like Halloween; there were huge spiders and skeletons everywhere, an audience of underground music nerds and computer programmer nerds. A trip I made with The Story of Modern Farming in Florida, where my friend Ross Brand took us under his wing. We played weird experimental improv to 50 ecstatic youngsters in a Tibetan diner in Tallahassee. We drove around a strange area and stayed at the beach house of Ross's step dad, a right-wing rich guy who liked guns. The whole area just fascinated me, it was very strange and ominous. I took a lot of inspiration from it writing for the Sacred Harp (a band I'm in, we're releasing an album in February). Many more, actually, but that's what came to mind right now.
4. As a fan, what's your favorite concert-going memory? That's a difficult one. The last years I couldn't really afford to go to concerts. The ones that I did see, I really enjoyed, but the ones that stick out in my mind right now are a noise+video+art performance by Brian McKenna and a concert by Serena Maneesh, the Norwegian shoegazing band, that blew me away with their amazing sound and light show; the whole package just excited me massively. You know, my memory is not that good. So I am very sure that I'm forgetting stuff here.
5. Who or what about the current music scene in Scandinavia excites you? In Norway there is a large scene for free improvisation, and amongst musicians a very contemporary mindset that goes beyond genre. I notice it more when I am spending time in other countries again, that it is really something special. It made me feel like I could breathe again, like I was unbound, free. This is a piece of Norway that I cherish and carry with me always.
6. Many groups compose songs on the road—during sound checks, in the van, etc. Did anything on Balls and Kittens come to life that way? In fact, the EP I self-released in 2009 was very much influenced by how I made it. I wrote and recorded in bedrooms, practice spaces, and coffeehouses in Amsterdam, Oslo, and Reykjavik. There are sounds on it of a music student fastening a bicycle-chain outside the Conservatory (currently I live right across the street), Tram number 12, the daughter of one of the members of Kaffi Hljomalind, a co-op coffeehouse in Reykjavik, and more. Now, thinking over the songs on that EP, I remember the intense feeling of those experiences, each with their own kind of beauty. The record, Balls and Kittens, Draught and Strangling Rain, also bears traces of travel. I guess it's inevitable. I've been touring and traveling quite a bit the last years. "Jim's Place" and "Adam's Place" were written in New York, when I was staying with each of them. And the latter tells about cultural confusion. "Shots Being Fired" is about when I came home from that trip, tired, and fell from one unpleasant situation into the next: "I came home from a burning fire, but here there's also shots being fired," and the loneliness of being away from your family and friends. "I Still Owe the Morning" tells about Amsterdam in the summer and a vacation I went on with my aunt, in Normandy.
7. Have you discovered anything remarkable on your various trips in Europe? Europe is so dense. The cultural differences relative to distance are much bigger than say, in the USA. 

City vs. Country: Norwegian Edition

I made up my mind soon after arriving in Norway for the second time. The sparsely peopled, rugged nation simply couldn’t be understood—or fully appreciated for that matter—by exclusively observing life in its urban centers. I had to ditch the traffic, skip the shopping, and head for the hills.

Not wanting to go it alone, I began to mentally scroll through the names of people I might persuade to join me. Almost immediately my friend Cathrine came to mind. Which makes sense I guess, given that I was sitting at her kitchen table when the idea hit me. So, breaking the ice with an idle comment about the favorable weather, I then suggested a hiking trip as we took the last bites of our breakfast one morning. “Are you sure you don’t want to see anything else in the city?” she asked skeptically.

A lover of restaurants, nightlife, and motorized transportation, I could see why Cathrine might initially be reluctant to trade these things for the pleasure of shivering next to me in a nylon tent. I let it drop. But at the end of an evening in which her drinking companions regaled us with tales of hunting moose and scaling peaks, she agreed that a woodsy weekend could be a nice change of pace. Especially after several aimless afternoons wandering the streets of Oslo. I have since decided to float all future hair-brained ideas across the seductive tides of a whisky snifter. A coffee mug only brings folly into sharper focus.

Discussing our adventures-to-be on the way home from the bar, we finally settled on Jotunheimen, a national park about 165 miles north of the capital. Home to the two tallest mountains in Northern Europe, it promised forbidding glaciers, punishing climbs, and the outside chance of spotting a frost giant. Fortunately she knew an actor who spent lots of time in higher altitudes and could lend us equipment, a good map, and his skills as an outdoorsman. Things we didn’t have, but might want to bring along—at least in her friend Haakon's opinion anyway.

Piling into a borrowed station wagon on an overcast afternoon, we sped north and westward, intending to set up camp that night and get an early start the next day. It wasn’t long after we awoke, shouldered our cumbersome packs, and set out however, that Cathrine and I came to the realization that we were in way over our heads. As in several feet. The pained look of concern we both wore on our faces became easier to read by the hour.

The day had begun with bright sun, hot food, and a brisk pace, but after a long morning of laboring across a field of car-sized boulders, my fondness for Mother Nature was flagging faster than my stamina. Pausing to catch my breath for the umpteenth time, I listened to Cathrine’s boots crunch against the smaller stones behind me and wondered where all the other hikers were. We hadn’t seen so much as a trace of another person since we broke camp, let alone evidence that anything living had come this way in a long, long time.

Another hour or so passed without much conversation, eventually delivering us to the day’s first real obstacle. As we paused at the edge of a steep snowfield, Haakon nonchalantly announced that the next step would be ascending a twenty-foot rock face without the aid of climbing gear. It dawned on me then that to your average Norwegian actor, the verb “to hike” bears virtually no resemblance to the definition commonly used throughout the rest of the world; i.e. a long walk, especially in the country, for pleasure or exercise.

Where I come from, a typical summer weekend is more likely to involve feats of eating than a test of anyone’s physical fitness. Not so in Norway. Calmly talking us through the handholds, he called down from the relative safety of the ledge above with a very matter-of-fact warning: “If you slip here, you’ll die.” Stupidly, I glanced down. While I stood there contemplating the likelihood of surviving a fall, I could feel the sweat pooling in the crevices of my waterproof clothing. The altitude amplified my exhaustion, and at that instant, my mind understood but one thing about Norway: the view from 7,000 feet can turn you into a city person very quickly.

Why Travel Never Gets Old

"When you cross the country, you are always crossing a new country, a moving destination." I read a good chunk of Robert Sullivan's Cross Country while staying with my parents in Maryland last week, and this particular sentence stopped me in my proverbial tracks. As I paused to reflect on the journeys I've repeated thus far in my life, I also considered how this idea summarized one of my favorite things about travel: its inconstancy.

Sure, there are places that have been designed to essentially deliver the same experience to people no matter how many visits they make, but I suspect that even in those cases, the destination has, in one slight way or another, moved. The restaurant you always visited on vacation may look the same, but perhaps a new chef has changed the menu since you were there last. Or could it be that the landmark you relied on to remind you where to turn is gone?

At home we often miss the smallest changes to the landscape, prone as we are to routine. But when we retrace routes we've taken before, unfamiliar sights and sounds contrast with the topography captured by our imperfect memories, causing us to view the scenery anew. This happened to me nearly every time I drove back and forth from college in Ohio and again during a return trip to Norway several years ago.

On my first visit I'd spent most of my time with a close friend who showed me around Oslo, introducing me to some of the places that made the city dear to her. One such spot was Cafe Amsterdam, an unassuming brown bar just around the corner from the National Gallery. Fondly remembering a long evening of conversation over dark beers, I tried to find it again one afternoon while wandering the city on my own. When I turned up at the address however, I was met with an unpleasant surprise—Cafe Amsterdam no longer existed. While my first instinct was to mourn the bar's disappearance, I stopped to reconsider. This wasn't a loss, but rather an opportunity to continue exploring Oslo. A chance to begin looking for a new destination.

The King of Hop

As far as celebrity and comestibles go, Michael Jackson, who passed away in late 2007 after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease, defined an entire genre. He was the Alice Waters of ale, the James Beard of beer, or as I prefer to call him, the King of Hop. Particularly in the 1980s and 90s, no single person did more to champion the brewed beverage served by the pint, can, or bottle.

And that guy could get around. Traveling far and wide from his native Yorkshire to catalog, classify, and compare beers, he wrote the proverbial book on the subject while contributing articles to newspapers and magazines in the process. Since I was on my way to Scandinavia when I learned of Mr. Jackson's death, I decided to visit the Norwegian establishments listed in his Pocket Guide to Beer. I'd been to Norway twice before, but this time I convinced myself that I had a new purpose.

The recommendations he gives in the guide indicated to me that he hadn't ventured much beyond the capital, which was OK, because retracing his footsteps would then be that much easier. Disappointed to find that the Studenten Cafe was now a Hard Rock Cafe, I kept walking and ended up at Lorry, one of the oldest restaurants in Oslo.

"The Aass is done," a large bartender informed me, referring to the draft line, so I opted for the dark, toasty Mack Bok (6.5% ABV) followed by a similar Frydenlund Bok (6.5% ABV). Pairing nicely with my reindeer burger and lingonberries, each bottle was 53 kroner. But the service didn't impress me nearly as much as their eclectic decor. Chock-a-block with "antiques" from Europe, Asia, and Africa, Lorry also claims to have Norway's largest collection of stuffed animals. Because who hasn't wanted to dine under a taxidermic giraffe? The real reason to go, of course, is the beer list: nearly two dozen Norwegian brews appear alongside a range of styles from 26 other countries.

A short distance away on Bogstadveien, the Oslo Mikrobryggeri may be a more exciting destination for beer nerds though; it's the city's only brewpub. During my visit they were pouring a Pils, a Steamer, a Bitter, a London Porter, an Imperial Stout, as well as a Sesongøl. The pub opens daily at three except Saturdays when they welcome imbibers at 12 p.m. sharp. If you arrive in the afternoon as my friends and I did, you'll have the place to yourself, which means unhindered access to their "flavoursome ales and stouts" to quote from Mr. Jackson's description.

Reading While Traveling

When compared to other units of measure, a week doesn't seem very big—except when most of it has been devoted to a single pursuit. I recently agreed to help a friend polish a manuscript that he intends to shop around to agents this summer, so in my case, the past week involved lots of editing. The title of this yet-to-be-published novel refers to a place in Australia, but many of the events in the opening chapters actually occur in a Norwegian city I've grown quite fond of.

On my last visit to Oslo, I paid a visit to Norway's largest bookstore dedicated to maps and travel. Located behind the Royal Palace on Uranienborgveien, Nomaden is a ideal shop to peruse if you happen to find yourself in Oslo and can't decide where to go next. Its shelves and staff do not lack for sources of inspiration. You might also consider stopping by if you've chosen to walk from one of the attractions downtown to Frogner Park in the west; Nomaden is on the way.