So-called “folk” and “singer/songwriter” music is (sadly!) the consumer waste of the music industry. Masses of it drift like rubbish islands through digital seas. It seems as though each EP stalks the previous one, offering few novel ideas of its own. Armed with microphones and acoustic guitars, the students of pop academies launch themselves from the springboard of placative nostalgia, even in 2018. In these choppy waters, sweethearts like Ida Wenøe are few and far between. Wenøe, a Berlin-based Dane, released her debut album Time of Ghosts in 2015. It’s a reminder of the qualities that made, and today rarely make, the folk genre so compelling and thirst-quenching: the dreadful and the beautiful, the natural and the supernatural. With a voice that seeps into your bones, Wenøe sings of ghosts and of the longing for death, of horror and fears. Alas, we’re forced to draw grandiose connections: to Joni Mitchell, Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs, Neil Young, or to the more recent majestic chorales of the Fleet Foxes. But it would be wrong to search for Wenøe’s roots primarily in psychedelic Californian strands of folk—its closest blood relative is rather the English style, which is known for its finger picking and reverb. If the author of this biography were to play a game of free association, The Wicker Man would be the first thing to come to mind. It’s a quirky horror-, crime-, and music film from 1973. We’d recommend watching it to get in the mood. Ida Wenøe is undoubtedly a fan.

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