Track By Track: Tuva Finserås takes us through her enchanting self-titled EP

Norweigan-born, now Melbourne-based artist Tuva Finserås has just unveiled a beautiful self-titled EP, one that is at once enchanting, sometimes haunting, always engaging. The five-track releases dances around some psychedelic-pop arrangements that offer nods to artists from her homeland, while feeling very unique in and of itself.

She sent us some excellent insights into each track of the EP, which you can read below as long as you don't get too lost in her world on the EP:

EASY GOING MONDAY

This song is about wanting to relax and dive into your own fantasy world. When I was in high school, I really liked the feeling of unexpectedly having a day off. I remember waking up one Monday morning and thinking “I have to go to school now”, then I said to myself “Wait! No, this is a public holiday!” – or I would sometimes pretend and just have a day to do my own thing… Only once in a while though. The song came along in a pretty interesting way. I had a piano-lick and chords that I came up with prior to writing the track. When I decided to build it into a song, the verse melody got stuck in my head straight and then I came up with some chords. I fiddled around with a chorus melody to go over the piano-lick and gave it two harmony-layers to accentuate the punchy feel.

I’M SORRY

This song is the most heart-felt song from the EP. It’s a direct apology and the lyrics are pretty candid. With lyrics like “Tasting the seasons, thinking what I could do”, I’m trying to say that a relationship is not always one happy ride, it has ups and downs, just as they all do. The lyrics “Life’s not a secret, that I will hide from you”, is where I’m trying to explain that I won’t pretend everything’s alright and I want to be upfront, honest and not hide everything inside a wall. All in all, it’s a simple, laid-back pop-song mixed with acoustic guitar and electronic sounds that explores the natural ups and downs of a relationship. I had all the melody in my head first, then I experimented with chords and arrangement.

RACING THE LIONS

Racing against an impossible win.

I wanted to take the listener through an intense journey through a dark jungle of giants. The metaphor of ‘the lions’ are impossible things you want to become. They are strong, beautiful, and fast; a competitor you can’t keep up with. I wanted to touch on this subject, as young humans get more and more unhappy with themselves, while striving to become something unachievable by nature. The song begins stripped back and describes the feelings you get on the starting line of a running race, and the person contemplating whether they run or stay where they are. I wrote the song fiddling around on the guitar and finding a nice chord progression. The verse melody came along naturally, and later on I experimented with an interesting, and a Muse-inspired musical arrangement. We’ve used thumping drums, bright organs and static synth lines to build and intensify, replicating the pulsating feeling of adrenalin and heat. Music video coming for this song soon!

WHILE OUR CITY SLEEPS

This is a soft song and most intricate on the EP. It’s about a relationship that unexpectedly falls apart. The beginning is very peaceful, then suddenly the relationship goes bad and there’s a lot of sadness in the breakdown. Whilst everything is feeling dead in the middle, you hear that things come back to life in the end with the vibrant change in the composition and optimistic change of pace at the end of the piece. I’ve used lots of motifs from nature to tell the story in a meaningful way. The instrumentation is very minimal, with a mix of soft picking guitar, and subtle synths and sounds that are meant to sound like it comes directly from nature. I was sitting in my bed one evening and got this melody in my head, so I just picked up the guitar and started playing and singing. The whole melody formed pretty quickly, and then the lyrics came along the more times I played it. I wish there was a more interesting story of how I wrote it, but it was as simple as that.

PACK OF WOLVES

This is my favourite track on the EP. I wrote it in my tiny, old-looking apartment, sitting on my bed and playing around with the guitar. I didn’t know what the song was going to be about, but I looked on my bedroom wall and there was a poster of three wolves starring into me. It all came along from there. It’s about a pack of wolves chasing you, and you’re finding yourself trapped in a nightmare, running from the darkness trying to take you away. I imagine a foggy, snowy tundra, or a dead forest. Although the lyrics are a bit vague, there’s a special meaning behind them. The wolves are a metaphor of the bad thoughts in your mind haunting you and trying to take you away to a bad place. As I’m sure many people have experienced, thoughts can take control over your life and be overwhelming. It’s like a bad circle – you’re trying to run away from your thoughts, but the more you do, the faster the wolves (your thoughts) track you down. The song’s got a huge climax in the end.

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