Thea & The Wild IKAROS

Thea & The Wild is the moniker of Norwegian songwriter, lyricist, musician and producer Thea Glenton Raknes. This is her second LP, following 2014's "Strangers And Lovers." Thea had a childhood was spent alternating between her mother’s hippie flat in Oslo, frequented by painters, poets and assorted other bohemians, and summers on her father’s boat crewed by Swedish prog rockers. This determined her musical future, essentially as a storyteller. Having skipped formal music education, she embraced a no-holds-barred approach to songwriting, oblivious to boundaries, that was perhaps inevitable in the circumstances. Presumably, this background accounts for ‘The Wild’; a rather more interesting vindication for a band name than the prosaic ones for Florence and the Machine, Marina and the Diamonds et al.

While her previous album dealt with personal experiences and relationships this one is directed more towards external affairs, including social and political ones, a line taken by other Norwegian artists latterly as a traditionally inward-looking society of “local people” begins to realise it has something to say on the world stage.