Ole Paus // Sanger fra et Hvitmalt Gjerde i Sjelen // CD

Ole Paus with a swinging new album 

- Mersey-beat and bluegrass-inspired band Real Ones

For years Ole Paus has been playing with the idea tentatively entitled "Small overtures for Doomsday". When he started planning the project in cooperation with KKV, producer H P Gundersen came up with the idea of getting Ole Paus into the studio with the Real Ones from Bergen. The outcome is this tremendous album where the band is an organic and energetic extension of Ole Paus' special guitar playing. 

After six days' recording in the studio in May this year, with producers H P Gundersen and Erik Hillestad, here is the result, a hugely entertaining range of music from tender ballads to furiously fast and wild grooves, unmistakably inspired by the 60s and 70s. 

Ole Paus' lyrics tell stories of seduction, vanity, indifference and intimacy, with an ironic twist and a serious tone. The listener might think of the songs as preludes in a minor key to the inevitability and perhaps necessity of a doomsday. Then again, one may also regard them as entertaining or poetically innocuous small sketches of life. From this unique duality comes the power to move the soul, hence the working title's metamorphosis into "Songs from the whitewashed fence of the soul", opening for a much broader and richer interpretation of the songs. 

The band is: Øystein Skjelaaen, Ivar Chelsom Vogt, David Chelsom Vogt, Kåre Opheim and Jørgen Sandvik, playing various guitars, banjos, mandolin, bass and drums. Hans Petter Gundersen also plays lap steel, pedal steel and double bass slide on the CD.

All the songs and the lyrics are written by Ole Paus, except "Hallelujah", which is his translation of Leonard Cohen's song.

Track list: 

1. En liten ouverture til Dommedag (A small overture to Doomsday)             4:10

2. Skyer rundt et fjell (Clouds surrounding a mountain)                                  4:02

3. For eksempel Spania (For example Spain)                                                    2:57

4. Det eneste menneske på jorden (The only person on earth)                      3:59

5. Nettverk (Network)                                                                                                 2:59

6. Post Woodstock                                                                                              3:51

7. Tinky Winky                                                                                                      4:01

8. Willy Moreno                                                                                                    3:08

9. Derfor (Therefore)                                                                                           3:22

10. På et hvitmalt gjerde i sjelen (On a whitewashed fence of the soul)        4:08

11. Merradalen                                                                                                     3:57

12. Halleluja (Hallelujah)                                                                                     6:48