Complete Mountain Almanac – Complete Mountain Almanac - January 27, 2023 via Bella Union

Complete Mountain Almanac

Listen to "February"

Complete Mountain Almanac – Complete Mountain Almanac
January 27, 2023 via Bella Union

PRESS RELEASE

Many serendipitous moments have led to the creation of the musical project known as Complete Mountain Almanac. The first of these temporal alignments came at a chance meeting between two visionaries — Norwegian-born, Sweden-based singer and composer Rebekka Karijord and American-born, Italy-based poet, dancer, and multimedia artist Jessica Dessner. Sometime in Brooklyn in the late ‘00s, these two women, both creative powerhouses in their own right, met through a mutual friend and immediately hit it off — although neither would quite know exactly how deep their friendship would subsequently grow, and how it would affect their art in the many years that followed.

Since then, Rebekka has continued to establish an illustrious career in Sweden and beyond, using her skills as a songwriter and producer to compose works ranging from film scores (most recently the 2020 Hulu documentary I Am Greta, about activist Greta Thunberg) to five studio albums of original material. Jessica, meanwhile, has published two books of poetry, choreographed pieces all over the world, and had her artwork for the Grateful Dead’s Spring 1990 (the Other One) box-set nominated for a Grammy. It would seem at first glance like two completely separate trajectories, but something kept the women linked for the decade after they first met. “Jessica gave me a poetry book that sat on my shelf for years,” says Rebekka about that first meeting. “We had sporadic contact over the years, but I came back to those poems several times. I was like, ‘These poems and this woman hold something special,’ but I didn't know what it was yet.”

The pair kept in touch when Jessica eventually relocated with her family from New York City to a farmhouse in Italy in 2016, which was around the time Rebekka had begun to tinker with the idea of writing a nature-focused album, something that would move through the passing of the seasons and showcase a range of organic feelings and moods. In this nascent creative process, she turned towards Jessica’s poetry as a source of inspiration. “Around 2016, I started to work on this idea about making a record about the 12 months of the year — it would be 12 pieces about nature and climate change,” explains Rebekka. “I thought it would be an instrumental record, but I soon felt the subject was too massive to write about in an abstract way. I write lyrics, but for this project, I felt like ‘No, I don't want to write these lyrics myself.’ Jessica was my #1 choice.”

Jessica and Rebekka began collaborating shortly thereafter, with Jessica providing poems and lyrics for Rebekka to compose music to. While Jessica is not a musician per se, as a dancer she naturally has a deep understanding of music as an artform. On top of that, she comes from a musical family: her twin younger brothers, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, are accomplished multi-instrumentalists, most known as part of indie rock stalwarts The National.

In 2017, after a year or so of collaborating on this yet-to-be-named project, something occurred that would drastically alter both the direction of the music and the lives of everyone involved: Jessica was diagnosed with breast cancer. Amidst the ensuing whirlwind of doctors, hospitals  and surgeries, Jessica’s work was understandably brought to a standstill. However, once she was on the other side, she soon started throwing herself back into creating art. Meanwhile, up north in Sweden, Jessica stayed on Rebekka’s mind. “Rebekka sent a little message just to check in and see how I was doing, and to say, no pressure, but if I needed to channel anything into the project, if I would find that healing or helpful in any way, I could do that,” explains Jessica. “I was able to use the structure of the year, because that's how it is with cancer — there's this sensation of using time, getting through a year at a time, with this cycle of nature.” Jessica’s poems are both fragile and incredibly strong, achingly private and totally universal. While they complemented Rebekka’s music perfectly, both artists were wary to bring together such personal and intense themes. “For me, I knew there was a risk in handing the poetry over to Rebekka,” says Jessica. “That it might not get developed into something that could meet what I feel or how I connect to the writing — but to say that it's gone so far beyond that is an understatement on my part. I could not believe how perfectly and deeply Rebekka met the original intention behind the writing with music. It’s just been an incredible process.” Finally, Complete Mountain Almanac had begun to truly take shape.

For the rest of that year, Rebekka holed up in her studio in Sweden to craft songs out of Jessica’s manuscript, weaving together her naturalistic concept with Jessica’s experience of healing from her illness. At the end of the marathon writing session, she emerged with about 15 demos, which she sent off to Jessica, who then shared them with her brothers during a family holiday gathering. “There's a history of me playing stuff for my brothers that they haven't heard or that I want them to like. They sat down and I knew instantly that they loved it, because I just know them so well — their whole body language shifts. And of course, the nature and the context of the project is also important for them.” It became clear that Aaron and Bryce would be involved, and all four artists united in Paris’ St. Germain studios to work on transforming Rebekka’s demos into a full-fledged album. In order to preserve the urgency and soul of the material, all the tracks were recorded live, just Rebekka’s voice intricately laced through Aaron and Bryce’s expert guitar playing. Rebekka recruited additional musicians to contribute horns and synthesizers, and Bryce ended up writing a string arrangement that was performed by the Malmö Symphonic Orchestra. It’s a staggering collection of songs, a suite of moods and harmonies that perfectly illustrate the trust between Rebekka and Jessica.

The album consists of twelve tracks, each named after a month of the year. Some have a meditative, almost hypnotic quality, using Jessica’s words as healing mantras. Take for example the opening track “January”, which repeats the line, “I need you to wake up… I need you to wake up,” around serenely plucked acoustic guitars. As the record cycles through the seasons, the seamless correlation between reckoning with the state of the planet in the wake of the climate crisis, and the healing of one’s body becomes abundantly clear. “Thank you beautiful breast, for all the life I have found through you,” sings Rebekka on “March”, translating Jessica’s words into bountiful lyrics. Sonically, the album cycles through folk, classical, chamber music and everything in between, creating a cocoon-like atmosphere that draws the listener into a stand-alone universe. It's a marriage of the inner and outer worlds, illness and rejuvenation, grief and joy.

Therein lies the idea of the almanac: having a guide to see you through each day, some kind of idea of what the future holds in uncertain times. But even as the project came together over the course of years, Rebekka and Jessica were always able to return to the core of their friendship to keep them on course, and the result is what might be one of the most important works  of their respective careers. “We're two different people with different stories, but somehow they entwine in a very trustful way,” says Rebekka warmly. “The album became this synergy, something bigger than itself. It’s about the natural world and it is about Jessica's process with her sickness. There is an enormous life force and hope in this material to me. It's like, her poems are really concrete at times, but they have the capacity to hold other people’s stories. That’s always what you look for when you write music: that connection point, that perfect balance between that personal and the universal.”

Tracklist

1. January

2. February

3. March

4. April

5. May

6. June

7. July

8. August

9. September

10. October

11. November

12. December