(Folk-Rock) Sophie Hunger - 1983 - 2010, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Sophie Hunger (born Emilie Jeanne-Sophie Welti, March 31, 1983 in Bern) is a multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter based in Zürich, Switzerland. Her independently released second album Monday’s Ghost (2008) stayed at the top of the swiss charts for several weeks and caught the attention of critics abroad. The Guardian described her as „Laura Marling, Beth Orton and Björk in one folk-rocking package“.
Hunger began her recording career as a member of the band Fisher, where she billed herself as Emilie Welti. The band released one album, Fisher (2005), before she embarked on a solo career as a singer/songwriter, changing her performance name to Sophie Hunger.
The swiss singer spent parts of her youth abroad, living in England and Germany. Her cosmopolitan biography is reflected in her multilingual songwriting. While most songs are in english or german language, each album contains one song in a swiss german dialect. Her most recent album 1983 (2010) also includes a cover version of Noir Désir’s Le vent nous portera in french language.
Totally unknown a few years ago Sophie Hunger has been on the road ever since, sharing stages with some of the country’s most successful artists, like Erik Truffaz, The Young Gods, Kutti MC or Stephan Eicher and appearing at locations such as Olympia in Paris, Miles Davis Hall at the Montreux Jazz Festival or the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury Festival.
She recorded her debut album Sketches on Sea (2006) at home in just a few days, released it on her own label and very quickly became the scene and the critic’s darling. The record was a slow burner, slowly evolving from the underground cult hit it was at first to becoming a commercial success. After her performance at the Eurosonic 2008, French daily newspaper Liberation predicted Sophie “would not stay Switzerland’s best kept secret for long”.
The musical directions of Sophie Hunger are limitless, from traditional folk songwriting bathed in jazzy moods to soul balladry. Her musical universe is very flourished, nourished by an exceptionally fragile yet mature voice as well as an ability to cross genres. For Sketches On Sea, she collaborated with a great number of musicians, from a trombone player to a flamenco guitarist. Sophie’s technical prowesses can lead her anywhere and allow her to do things that nobody else could get away with.
Hunger has always worked in a collaborative spirit, and her many musical interests have led her to a fascinating geographic and personality mix. Recorded in Lausanne (studio du Flon) and Brussels (ICP), produced by Marcello Giuliani (already acclaimed for his work with Henri

Mixing the low-key folk-rock of Gravenhurst and PJ Harvey at her least hysterical, Sophie Hunger produced one of the better singer/songwriter albums to grace the European charts -- in this case, Swiss ones -- with 1983. The focus is firmly on the vocals, placed firmly in the forefront of the mix -- they are simply louder than the rest of the music -- but this is a clever producing decision, not the vanity of someone in love with her voice, as it could have been with a lesser performer: Hunger never forgets that she is there to write songs, not preach or show off her vocal cords. And write songs she does -- an impressive variety of them, in fact, from the rocking "Your Personal Religion" with its bluesy guitar in the middle to the quiet acoustics of "Travelogue" and the almost a cappella opener, and with the rest padded out by a quiet but involved mix of electronica beats suggesting a relaxed Massive Attack, guitar picking, sparse piano lines that clean the much-stained name of "cabaret music," and even dashes of brass and plastic synths where appropriate. The best thing about it, though, is that the music is amazingly cohesive but never dull -- Hunger goes for an introspective nighttime mood, sometimes elegiac, sometimes gloomy, and uses whatever tools she can think of to create it, all without wallowing in unnecessary melodrama. Not every cut stands up to the general standard -- the opening song is too quirky, for example, and some of the latter songs struggle for the same emotional impact that earlier tunes produce effortlessly -- but still, 1983 is as fine a brooding session as can be wished for.