Small-town Norway couldn't contain the wild spirit of Ida Maria. Interview by DOUG JOHNSTONE..
HEAR THE PHRASE "FEMALE singer-songwriter", and you might think of a woman armed with acoustic guitar and winsome melodies (Katie Melua, Amy Macdonald), a soulful retro crooner (Amy Winehouse, Adele) or a quirky pop chanteuse in vintage dress (Kate
Nash, Lily Allen).
But then there's Ida Maria, who blows all that out of the water. The 23-year-old from Nesna, a tiny town in northern Norway, looks coyly seductive in press shots but unleashed on stage she's a whirling dervish of punk energy, an unpredictable force of nature with a magnetic presence.
With her band she digs out tunes brimming with life and imbued with the unhinged spirit of Iggy Pop and The Stooges and dripping with the kind of manic drive of the early days of The Strokes. Topping it all off is Maria's extraordinary voice, a cracked and visceral howl somewhere between Janis Joplin and Björk. Her live vocal performance is like adrenaline syringed straight into your heart, which makes it all the more remarkable she only discovered how to sing like that by accident.
Having moved from Nesna to Bergen under the pretence of attending university, Maria was making music, performing relatively tame acoustic songs at small local gigs, until one fateful evening.
"I remember that night really well," she cackles. "It was this open mic thing and I had a song I'd just written. I was so eager to play it for everyone and then Erland Øye from Kings of Convenience (quiet Norwegian acoustic duo] got on stage just as I was going up to play. I was so p***ed off, then he played this really slow, melancholic pop song, and I was like, 'Oh, that is crap, I want to play my music!'
"When I eventually got up there I sang my heart out and my voice just broke. The reactions I got were so positive I realised I'd hit a nerve, and I had to keep being angry."
She laughs at this memory, a throaty rasp she breaks into throughout the interview. The release of that night was an epiphany; from that moment everything clicked into place.
"I just found that this is my favourite kind of music to play, this is what I wanna do, because you can't pretend, you have to be honest with your music when you go and do it over and over again."
It had been a while coming. Maria had a teenager's typical disgust at the small town she was raised in, finding the lack of creative outlets thoroughly frustrating.
"I had so many things I wanted to do, and nobody could understand what the fuss was about," she says. "Everyone I was at school with just met someone then had children and stayed in Nesna. I wanted something else, you know? When I discovered rock music it was a revolution. I thought, 'F*** this place, I'm off, I'm following the rock 'n' roll star'."
Which is how she now finds herself signed to major label Sony BMG and on the verge of releasing her fantastic debut album, Fortress Round My Heart. Early singles like the rattling punk-pop of Oh My God and the upbeat indie singalong Queen of the World have showcased Maria's talents, and created a buzz around her, something she's taking in her stride. She's just glad to have the making of the album out of the way.
"It was a very painful process," she says. "Being in the studio isn't where I feel most at home. It's a very personal thing to do, making a record. It was very hard work trying to capture that live energy. It was fun but there were a lot of tears as well."
And she doesn't just mean emotional tears, either.
"I'd broken my ribs playing a live show just before we went into the studio," she laughs. "It was one of the most painful weeks of my life. Trying to sing with broken ribs, trying to sing as high and as hard as you can, is really, really painful, but you know, it had to be done."
She breaks off into yet more laughter. Those broken ribs weren't an isolated incident. Maria is rapidly developing a reputation for unpredictable, full-blooded performances, and among the list of other gig-related injuries is a head wound thanks to a clash with a wayward guitar.
"It's nothing," she shrugs. "I've always been very impulsive, when I climb up on the stage, people get to see how impulsive I am."
Something which may be connected to her creative streak is the fact that Maria suffers from synesthesia, a fascinating condition where the senses get jumbled up. In her case, she sees music as colours.
"It's hard for me to say whether it affects what I do, because I don't know how you write songs without colours hanging around," she says.
"For me songwriting is about gathering the right colours and shapes into the right places, and I guess that's what you call notes, tones and rhythm."
Despite being on the verge of something potentially huge, Maria remains down to earth, and certainly isn't the kind of woman to plan for the future.
"I don't care about that," she says sharply. "This whole thing blew out of all proportion a long time ago, so now I'm just surfing on the sunshine, you know?"
• Ida Maria's UK tour comes to the Tunnels, Aberdeen, tomorrow and King Tut's, Glasgow, 1 June. For more information, visit www.idamaria.co.uk
What other people are saying… "The feisty Norwegian looks a bit like that aunt who isn't invited to family occasions, but shows up – tipsy and wearing a baseball cap backwards. But her energetic presence and catchy pop songs seem just what this country needs."
– The Times
"Picture The Strokes fronted by Björk – that'll give you some idea of Maria's debut single, Oh My God. She says it's 'a song to have a panic attack to – like a desperate shout'. That tells you much about her approach: she once went so crazy on stage she cracked her ribs."
– Q magazine
