Press release for "House on Swallow Street"

"House on Swallow Street" is a meditation on sound, language and place, tracing Jacobsen’s own entry and connections she made throughout her year of living in Sardinia as she went deeper into Sardinian life. The first song, “Terra po Approdare,” begins with a recording of the swallows on the narrow street outside her house: it is an intimate acoustic song describing the sensation of living alone in the large stone house that became a home in the rural Sardinian village where she lived. Cowritten with her Sardinian language teacher, Franzisca Manca, the song then tumbles into track number two, “These Cobblestone Streets.” Featuring voice, double bass and delicate lead guitar from guitarist Ignazio Cadeddu, the song wrestles with the challenges of “culture shock” and being immersed in a new culture, a new language and a new bureaucracy for the first time. “Tiria,” cowritten with Matthew “Baro” Papperi in the Sardinian language, is an upbeat bluegrass song, remembering the life and home village of his maternal grandmother and featuring Papperi’s resonant and cavernous singing voice. “Sardinian Welcome,” written with Sebastiano Dessa-nay, is an upbeat meditation on Sardinian festival life and the desire to both belong to a small, rural place but also to individuate, leave and become one’s own person. “Reckoning” is a bluesy cowrite with Sardi-nian blues master and singer, Matteo Leone, that tells the story of a small Sardinian fishing village. The al-bum’s next track, written in the city of Sassari with songwriter Giuseppe Bulla, features Bulla’s voice recoun-ting the exquisite freedom found “On a Rooftop” on a sultry hot Sassari summer; the track foregrounds a gutteral background singing style reminiscent of traditional Sardinian a cappella singing, hand percussion and Irish- and Sardinian-inspired guitar licks. Tracks 7-10 (“Santi Sardi,” “I Don’t Wanna Smile,” “Six Seconds” and “Maison Dancer”) shift focus to feature Jacobsen’s singing and feature original Ameri-can “country” songs written in English that have been “translated,” linguistically and musically, into a Sardi-nian context. Featuring voice, acoustic guitar, Sardinian guitar, accordion and double bass, the songs show the incredible linguistic diversity of the island. “Semus Torrande” is the final cowrite featured on the album, and tells the story of Sardinian out-migration “fuori” to find work and the call to return to Sardi-nia. The final song, a “hidden track,” features one of the first songs learned in Sardinia by Jacobsen, a song from the city of Sassari about the beautiful “Fontana di Rosello” (Gavino Soro & Raimondo Sanna) called “Carraioru di Ruseddu” (Talk About Records)

Reviews (translated from Italian):

“House on Swallow Street” gives life to an experience that, especially for us Italian mainlanders, sounds brilliantly odd and that can be summarized in the following question: “what happens when a musician from Massachusetts goes to Sardinia?” No one can answer that better than Kristina, because you could easily have met her on the streets of Cagliari (and beyond), the city where she taught Ethnomusicology as a visiting professor and where, for the Sardinian label Talk About Records, she recorded this latest album, a sort of diary of her first year on the island.

Even some Sardinian swallows, like the ones that appear on the album cover and, of course, in the album title, testify to this fact, where they appear on the first track, “Terra po Approdare” (the swallows you hear chirping are the ones outside her house –you hear them again, at end of the record), “These Cobblestone Streets” is a meditation, partly in English, partly in Italian, partly in Sardinian, of what happens when you come from so far and you encounter a new world (there’s great dialogue in Italian mimicked by Kristina, performed in spoken word during the track, or expressions like “Cannonau wash it down”, which we will soon suggest as a new universal pre-toast motto). In addition to the guitar and the folk influences, entrusted to guitarist Ignazio Cadeddu, the strings and harmonies should be noted. “Tiria” is a nostalgic bluegrass track whose text is written entirely in Sardinian, in collaboration with Matthew Papperi. “Sardinian Welcome,” with accordion, guitar and double bass, tells and translates the festive and livelier side of the island and of Sardinian village life. A different story is told in “Reckoning,” referencing a fishing village with a traditionally country folk tone (the collaboration is with the Sardinian blues singer Matteo Leone), and “On a Rooftop” (with Giuseppe Bulla), a more contemporary song, which takes us into the heat of a Sassari summer. Here, more than anywhere else, we notice Kristina's ability to bring together different styles, such as traditional American folk, with rhythms (hand percussion), typical Sardinian melodies, and more.

“Santi Sardi,” one of the key pieces of the album, together with the following three tracks, is an interesting experiment, where we see the capable voice of Kristina translate what are typically country songs in another cultural context, so much so that she is able to create a sort of authentic Sardinian saudade (sorrow, nostalgia), in the beautiful “Semus Torrande,” which tells stories of emigration outside Sardinia and, therefore, of homesickness. The final track, “Carraioru di Ruseddu” was written by Gavino Soro and Raimondo Sanna after the famous Rosello Fountain in Sassari." (Alessandro Montefamiglio, "Storia della Musica," March 2021).


"Kristina Jacobsen’s oeuvre, informed by a world of global music—all deeply considered and then seemingly wrapped up quietly but with profound sentimentality in her spacious and intimate songs—includes so-nic touches of American honky tonk and folk music. She delivers her songs in a yodeling alto that can warm your heart, bite off a searing denunciation, or celebrate good times with equal fervor. Her travels, from the American southwest and Scandinavia to Sardinia, resound in every note in a rich melting pot of culture and human connection." (August March, Weekly Alibi, June 2019)



Discography:

'Three Roses,' 2015 (Three Roses Music)
'Elemental,' 2018 (EP with Meredith Wilder)
'Shelter,' 2019 (Three Roses Music)


www.kristinajacobsenmusic.com
www.facebook.com/HonkyTonkAmericana/
@jacobsen.kristina (Instagram)


talkaboutrecords.net
talkaboutrec.bandcamp.com


Ufficio stampa: PITBELLULA
rossana@pitbellula.com
Press page: www.pitbellula.com/artist/kristina-jacobsen