Being a complete and utter Mac lover, I often like to procrastinate by exploring the itunes music store to see what’s new in music each week. On their site they have a section titled celebrity playlists. Here, everyone from Ruben Studdard to Sting have compiled a list of songs that they are listening to at that moment in time, kind of a “What’s in your CD player?” for the digital millennium. It was there that I found this gem of an artist. One track on John Mayer’s celebrity playlist titled “Sleeping with the Lights On” by Teitur. As soon as I heard this song I wanted to hear more. After listening to each song on Poetry & Aeroplanes I realized I had purchased every single song on the album, certainly a first for me.
The majority of the album is acoustic guitar so it sounds like you are receiving a personal concert by Teitur Lassen himself. While the music is rather simple, this minimalism allows Teitur’s voice and poetic lyrics to shine through. I was particularly drawn in by a line on the track titled “You’re the Ocean” that goes, “Love is somewhere in-between what you believe and what you dream.”
Teitur left his native Faroe Islands (located between Scotland and Iceland) at the age of 17 to bring his music to a large audience. Though his music shows little evidence of his unusual birthplace, his lyrics often contain long-distance, landscape imagery and yearning, heartbreaking sentiments. Having opened for John Mayer during this past year, Teitur Lassen is putting his home islands on the map, and it won’t be long until his music is on many people’s playlists.
Archived article by Kelsey Nichols