Marianne Engebretsen is an artist, songwriter, and producer from the west coast of Norway. She describes her characteristic sound as soaring, tender, and catchy pop that is inspired by the changing ocean climate around her. “Citylights” is a beautiful genre-bending tune that truly feels like its own world.
“Citylights” is a neatly and carefully produced song, executed to its fine details in both its acoustic instrumentation and digital layers. The acoustic guitar and string layers lend a delicate beauty that makes the song feel airy and emotive on top of the gentle rhythm section. This creates a lot of space for Marianne’s voice which comes through really well along its affected doubles, layers, and pitch shifted ad-libs that are reminiscent of music from artists like Bon Iver.
It’s the songwriting that makes “Citylights” really stand out. The structure is not obvious and its subtle nature allows the song to progress without the listener inserting expectations. Just as it ends without telegraphing, the transitions from each section arrive naturally without having to cue you in.
Across the board, the timbre of all the instruments are very well chosen filling the frequency range nicely at different points of the song. There are also cool points of textural pops panned out alongside reversed effects on pianos and other instruments that get sprinkled along with most of the tracking which really allows Marianne and the main guitar rhythm to hypnotize you in this beautiful tune.
There is also great context to the song of getting lost in your head and the song feels like you’re really inside an artist’s head, floating in their thoughts, via meditative sound waves. This is a very impressive tune and fans of Bon Iver, soul, acoustic, and alternative pop are in for a treat with “Citylights.”
We look forward to hearing more from Marianne Engebretsen.
Written by Jon Kagan
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