Ethereal folk debut by Out of the Woods stirs the soul

Despite the quarantine (Swedes – ‘What quarantine?’), I pushed our soul boat out into the clear Scandinavian waters to see what we discover beyond our usual genre’s shores. The roots of soul genre expanded into a thousand directions, and the Nordic islands have a myriad of intriguing voices and songs from the heart to discover. After a hearty meal, (just to give you a fuller nautical experience) I found myself moored on the banks on a new folk/soul singer group – Out of the Woods.

The engaging quality and melodic purity of their debut single – Sunday Reassurance translates from sound into palpable feelings. The vocals by Ditte Grube, in particular, cross the margins between blues and soul – sullen yet warm. The jazzy double bass adds a harmonious balance of weight and depth while the strings soar freely.

Describing the song’s concept Out Of The Woods says:

‘Sunday Reassurance is about the urge for temporality, and the fear of committing, the fear of permanence. About how complicated love can get, when one is full of calmness, and the other continuously need to draw attention to the fact that tomorrow can be the end of the world, death can occur every minute and love may not last forever.

The story is portrayed in picturesque scenery in the music video (see above), where the two main characters of the song move towards each other without ever meeting. In contrast to the thousands of birds that fly synchronously as one single organism. In a parallel universe hidden in the woods, the abstract becomes concrete, while the song is simultaneously told from a room somewhere in the dark.‘

Out Of The Woods

Behind the artist name, Out Of The Woods is Ditte Grube. The Icelandic artist has written, recorded, mixed and produced the entire forthcoming album Birds and Beasts. The result is from several years of work in the home studio, including trips with the pocket sound studio to Iceland.

Birds and Beasts reached its final form in collaboration with several guest artists such as Thomas Sejthen (INDRA, Uffe Steen Trio), Bo Rande (Blue Foundation, Mames Babegenush), and the fabulous Icelandic violinist Una Sveinbjarnardóttir (Björk, The Iceland Symphony Orchestra).

Birds and Beasts will be out June 12th. I’ll be setting my sails back to Iceland for that!