Ida Maria explodes on debut album “Fortress Round My Heart”
The Stockholm-based Ida Maria (24), from northern Norway, may be the best Scandinavian export since Sweden’s the Hives and Denmark’s Junior Senior crashed onto the music scene years ago, writes The Canadian Press.
Ida Maria’s debut album “Fortress Around My Heart” is now out in the US and the launch campaign kicked off with a not-to-be-missed tour on March 23. After having won hearts in the UK and on the continent, Ida Maria hit the roads after an appearance at Austin’s SXSW. She missed her first concert due to some visa trouble.
Popmatters’s review of her new album posted on March 16: “It’s a confident, downright cracking debut record, and late to the party as we in North America may be, when the music’s a fun as this, it hardly matters at all”
Ida Maria is the next big thing, writes Jessica Hopper at the Chicago Tribune. Now that she has made it out of the Norwegian hinterlands and up the international pop charts, there may be no place she doesn’t go. Having conquered Scandinavia, then England, Ida (pronounced Eee-dah) has high hopes for turning her buzz into stateside fame, writes Hopper.
David Malitz at The Washington Post calls her a “Norwegian firecracker”. “Ida Maria is a Scandinavian sensation worth screaming about,” writes J. Freedom du Lac.
“Ida Maria throws herself into every song as if it’s all a big finale, which makes for an auspicious beginning,” says Lindsey Thomas at Spin.
According to Mark Deming, at allmusic.com, Ida Maria appeared “seemingly out of nowhere with a batch of superb pop songs full of punk-infused energy and vocals chops that Björk or Polly Jane Harvey would envy.”
No surprise, Ida Maria’s hit “Oh My God” has already been used in ads for the CW’s soap operatic teen drama “Gossip Girl”.
