Teitur - The Singer

ORCHESTRAL POP

Unashamedly ambitious and epic, this is the first album from the Faroe Islands singer-songwriter to be released in the UK, his third overall. It’s a sumptuous and elegant piece of orchestral pop, a melancholic concept album as much stage musical as conventional pop album, with the likes of Rufus Wainwright and Neil Hannon obvious influences. Teitur is more tortured, however, and verges on unsavoury melodramatic self-indulgence at times, especially with some seriously overwrought vocals. But when he concentrates on simple-hearted melodies, like on the whooping ‘Catherine the Waitress’ or the Motown-does-thrupenny-opera of ‘Legendary Afterparty’, he’s undoubtedly a prodigious talent.