Ane Brun

Ane Brun recently fell in love. Upon doing so she decided to document how she felt for her her new partner through a mixtape of sorts. While those teenage years of spending hours compiling a cassette or CD with songs that shaped how we thought of someone has been replaced by the ease and speed of the Spotify playlist, Ane's method was far more intimate. She took the songs that showed best how she felt and reworked them for her new partner. Sadly during the process the love faltered, but Ane decided to continue in her journey to document her feelings in what has become her her eighth studio album, Leave Me Breathless.

This is a collection that does exactly what the title says it will. Anyone who has ever been in love knows how deeply beautiful, but equally tumultuous that emotion may be. While the collection veers towards the serene and romanticized, it is a collection that will may even the hardest of hearts flutter faster.

Although Ane's fans have seen her grow from acoustic songsmith to fully fledged pop icon over her last few releases, Leave Me Breathless strips back her sound once again to showcase that she is an artist who does not need extra production or hidden layers to allow the emotion in her voice to hit you hard where it matters the most.

A collection that includes covers of everyone from Foreigner to Maria McKee, Mariah Carey to Radiohead - this is a record that on paper should not work but in reality feels truly cohesive and delivers a journey unlike the majority of albums released these days. As Ane works her way through the ups and downs of her emotional experience, you feel every single word.

Album opener I Want To Know What Love Is strips the song of the pomp and shows that at its bones, it is one of the most emotionally charged songs ever written. The sheer determination and want in Ane's vocal will leave you tingling and hitting the repeat button to listen time and again.

Unchained Melody is one of the most covered songs of all times, and while Ane stays true to the simplicity that defines it, hers is a rendition you will not grow bored of. The inclusion of the truly haunting Shakespears Sister's is a truly inspired decision. Arriving at the album's turning point, Ane's voice has every inch of the emotion of the unforgettable original. Following in the shadows of Hero, Show Me Heaven and Into My Arms, this is the album's heart-stopping moment of clarity. Life isn't perfect and things do not always go as we with them, but unless we fight for what we want, then it never will. As Ane pours her heart and soul into each word, her listener holds out every inch of hope for her to really know what love is.

Stay is followed by Radiohead's How To Disappear Completely and Sade's By Your Side, the songs which Ane was asked to sing at the funeral of Crispin Bevington, who was killed at terror attacks in April 2017. Their appearance acts as the most touching of tributes.

Bob Dylan's Girl From The North Country offers the opening of a new chapter for Ane. Having loved and lost, she sets out to find who she is once again and how her experience has re-shaped her. It is in this Dylan classic and the album's penultimate track, Make You Feel My Love (which of course is now often associated with Adele), that we see Ane really return the early years of her career. She is a girl with a guitar and song to sing, but who has a lot of love to give when the right one comes along.

Leave Me Breathless may on the face of it be a covers collection, but it feels more like a body of original work telling the truly personal story of the artist at the album's centre. This is truly remarkable and extremely moving.