Number 7 of 2006 — Tina Dico: In The Red

It’s almost impossible to listen to Tina Dico without hearing the influence of Zero 7 and vice versa. This is despite Tina Dico co-writing just two tracks on Zero 7’s When It Falls. Tina’s career however predates her appearances with Zero 7, and as this year’s re-releases of Notes and Fuel shows, her style has remained pretty constant since 2001, gradually depending less on acoustic arrangements, becoming more complex and filled out.

This is the first impression one gets with In The Red: like Lunik’s Life is on Our Side, there’s great satisfaction in listening to a record which so clearly fulfills its objectives and works as a coherent piece of work. It exists as an album, rather than as songs that are related merely by their identical release date. Released in her native Denmark in 2005, and in the UK last year, Tina wrote the songs over a period of four years, then some others to tie those together, giving everything a context and building relationships between the songs. In The Red, boasts great performances from the musicians and from Tina’s wonderful smokey vocals, with Tina acting as therapist and patient. Relationships aren’t nearly as blunt or as full of minutia as that of twee-pop Hello Saferide’s Annika Norlin, but everything is obviously heartfelt and experienced – in turns introspective and counselling, depending on the song and the subject. In The Red is full of exceptional songwriting and imaginative lyricism.

There’s an understated beginning to the album, with the introduction to Losing being simple piano lines and strings, providing a teasing lead into Tina’s vocals before the full band comes in with the chorus, which is quite an unexpected string laden crescendo. Touches of acoustic percussion and electronic blips and noise carry the song along in between – these small details are common throughout the album, providing continual interest through repeated listenings. The majority of the arrangements are built on acoustic and electric guitar (the former played by Tina), bass and drums, supported by the occasional piano and other keyboards. Tiny riffs are dropped in to the mix to highlight certain lyrics. Although the majority of the songs are melancholic, they’re rarely soporific. Warm Sand and My Mirror triumph through the blossoms in their choruses.

But I think the emphasis should be on the lyrics. Taken as a whole, the album is a compelling collection of emotional struggles, sometimes with Tina as the protagonist, but most often she’s the one providing comfort and wisdom – even to herself. Nobody’s Man takes a puzzling relationship “Nobody feels the weight of your mission / Nobody can set you free / Nobody knows the way to your fortune / Nobody and least of all… Me” but embraces its inevitable peculiarities. Give In suggests that it’s useless looking for perfection in ourselves or others, recommending that one should instead welcome the confusion and unknown.

In The Red sees Tina “on a rescue”. Intimacy evoked with sparse production that grows into sweet rocking multitracked vocals that close the song. She seems intent on trying to understand her own feelings and those of her friends and lovers. Sometimes introspective, at other times offering support and therapy to others. This balance is held throughout the album. Use Me is the ultimate submission, in some respects a companion to In The Red – remarking that “I’ve touched you where it hurts” – it benefits from subtle elegiac keys, pleading for someone to come through their unhappiness. The Joni-esque Room with a View documents the time she was in London, away and apart from her boyfriend, but grateful that she doesn’t have the lives of those she observes through her window.

Tina says in an interview that the songs are “personal rather than private”. By that she means she’s extrapolated her own experiences, reflecting them in such a way as to be applicable to her listeners, becoming sufficiently ambiguous so that anyone can relate to them. It’s this that makes the emotional connection, far above her peers, such as the oft-referenced and ridiculed Dido whose songs are little more than Twitter-ings.

Head Shop is the curio in this collection: Always one who is aware of their feelings, her life gets overturned by one whose “insight threw me like a typhoon”. Together they plot “great escapes”, to elope, only to find he abandons her – “he never turned up that night”. This lesson learned drives the desire for faithful companionship, despite the bad times, and is something she clearly demands and believes in. “I’m nothing without you, I’m hollow without you” – emphasising similarities and differences on “My Mirror”, and the thrill of idiosyncrasies: “I find in his look an insecurity childishly submissive / I say foolish things, I do strange things for attention”. This opinion is repeated most obviously on the dubby masterful One, where “All you need is one”, these pair of songs are uplifting in the dour context of the rest of the album, but that’s the essence of the album, the message, if there is one.

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