Liv Kristine – Skintight (2010)

First of all we have to disclose that we are HUGE fans of Liv Kristine and we have loved almost every thing she has ever released in her career, until now. “Skintight” shows the desperation of an artist trying to break into ‘mainstream’ music. With Leaves’ Eyes and Atrocity being highly popular and very different musical outlets you would image that such a quality singer like Liv would have enough.

Since 1998, Liv has been releasing stuff promoting her solo career. We loved “Deus Ex Machina” since it was a nice break from her main gig back in those days (Theater of Tragedy) and it featured some nice folk-ish songs with some other pop-ish material mixed in between. Not much came of this (except in Norway) and she went back to releasing ToT albums until she got the boot in 2003. And we feel that her best chance at ‘mainstream’ commercial success was with “Musique” and “Assembly”, some electronic/techno oriented albums that shined with her vocals.

Anyways, Liv tried again with “Enter My Religion” in 2006 and due to poor promo/distribution of Road Runner records it was not properly showcased and many people just missed this somewhat decent album. And here is where you notice the problem with her solo career, the album was a indeed different than “Deus Ex Machina”, but it was very uninspired and featured songs all over the place in different styles and genres.

Moving forward, with “Skintight” we have again the same producing/writing team behind ”Enter My Religion”, Alexander Krull (Liv’s husband) and Thorsten Bauer (band mate from Leaves’ Eyes and Atrocity). Here is where we see the problem, with Krull and Baure might be excellent at making Metal songs, they plain suck at crafting ‘mainstream commercial’ songs. The folk-ish elements and pop elements are kind of plain and propose nothing in this album. There is also a lack of uniqueness to give this album an ‘indie’ feel, and it also sounds ‘too pop’ for indie stuff.

“Skintight” has some decent songs but they also feel all over the place, while Liv’s voice is great, the music is somewhat sloppy. From “Boy at the Window” electronics/beats to “Wonders” ballad/folk-ish nature, there is a HUGE musical gap between the styles of these songs that are presented back to back in this album. The musicianship is great in this release, but the problem is that the songs are not that good.

While “Skintight” will be treasured by most of Liv’s fans, it’s just another sub-par record that will most-likely not get much attention by mainstream press and media. Piggy-backing on Leaves’ Eyes and Atrocity’s fame might get her a bit further than with her previous releases, we would not bet too much on this album either. We think that if Liv wants to do solo stuff, she should stick to one style only. Something like Kari Rueslåtten did after she was kicked around for experimenting too much and following what everybody else wanted her to do (in pursuit of commercial success) instead of finding her niche and sticking with it.  Or get a duet with Armin Van Buren (or any other hot DJ) like some other singers (hint hint Sharon from WT).

Release: September 14th, 2010

Country: Norway