Wed. Dec. 7
"My friends and family call me Nanna and I would like it to stay that way," said the Danish singer the rest of us know as Oh Land. Twenty-six years ago, she was born Nanna Øland Fabricious.
"For 
me, Oh Land was a very natural stage name, as it is how my middle name is pronounced in English," she continued. "I liked the anonymity of it and that it didn't indicate whether I was a boy or girl or a band. Especially in the beginning, it gave me a lot of freedom because there wasn't a face to it. It was just about the music."
"It's like I have two enhanced versions of myself. Oh Land is the super version of me where I do all the things I wouldn't always get away with normally. It's sort of like Clark Kent and Superman."
Oh Land headlines Brighton Music Hall Wednesday Dec. 7. She will play synthesizer and omnichord, alongside her backup musicians, synthist Tore Nissen and drummer Hans Hvidberg-Hansen.
"To me, everything in music is about contrast," she said. "The more light the more dark. For every beautiful dream there's a nightmare. I try to mix everything into my own sound, from melancholy to over-excitement."
"I like looping vocals in order to create harmonies that are not just made with piano chords," she added. "In that way, it makes the music softer and brings an ethereal layer on top of the very hard masculine beats."
Oh Land grew up as an only child on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Her father was a classically styled composer and her mother sang opera. As such, Gregorian music, psalms and hymns surrounded her. But she did have one particular passion in the pop world, the long-reigning queen of eccentricity, Bjork.
"Bjork was my imaginary best friend growing up," Oh Land said. "I felt like I knew exactly what she felt. I had a big temper and was very expressive as a child. I was often told to sit still or keep quiet. I just couldn't help it I needed to burst out my feelings all the time and was always getting into trouble because I was living in my own head. With Bjork I never felt that I was too much. I felt like I could do cartwheels all the way to school and it would be perfectly all right."
Of course, there¹s the Kate Bush reference everyone myself included make about a lot of female singers who go beyond simple pop and weave textures together. Oh Land was not yet born when Bush was taking the world by storm. But was she an influence later?
"Actually I only know few of Kate Bush songs," said Oh Land, "so it's funny being compared. I guess we have some things in common though, both having been dancers and both starting our own music productions and stuff. But because I grew up in a very classical home there are a lot of contemporary bands that I’m only just discovering now,.like the Rolling Stones and Nirvana. I'd never heard their music until very recently.There's this big treasure that I'm digging into way later than everyone else."
Oh Land’s initial pursuit was ballet, but she suffered a serious back injury – a slipped disc and spinal fracture - during a show at the Swedish Opera House.
"I was tired from over-training and my muscles didn't react the way they were supposed to when I did a bad landing from a jump," Oh Land said. "It took my a few years of rehab, still trying to get back to dance until I finally realized that it wasn't an option anymore."
"I think at first there was denial," she continued. "Accidents only happens to others. It doesn't happen to you. It was very hard to believe that my body was this fragile. At the age of 18 you think you can do anything. It took me a long time to accept the facts. A few years at least. Songwriting was my way of dealing with all the things I didn't feel like talking to people about. Music didn't judge. It was where I could pour all my emotions out. It soon got addictive and at one point I didn’t look back anymore. It was like I had fallen in love again."
Oh Land called her music "a playground of sound." "Music has always been an essential part of my life and it was the reason I got into ballet in the first place," she said. "But I'm happy that I didn't start playing until this late in my life. It gave me a freedom in my creation that I think would have been more difficult if I had been trained since I was a kid. I knew what I wanted but I didn't know the instruments. I was forced to rely on my ears. I found out I have strong ears."
Many songwriters, when pressed, insist their songs are not autobiographical. Not Oh Land. "Everything is seeds from my life," she said. "Songwriting is about zooming in on details in life and then focusing on only that thing until you feel better. You’ve got to be a bit obsessive to write a song. It's tough to be so personal, but in the end you feel lighter."
"To me it's all about vocals and beats. I almost always start with either a rhythm or a melody. It's very primal in a way. Clapping and stomping and recording textures in everyday life like traffic noise, coffee cups, honking horns etc. All these sounds that we know create an environment for the songs and tell a story. To me the sounds are just as important as the songs. It gives character and emotion."
Something I like about music is that it gives you a freedom visually to do whatever you like. It's not like theatre that has to look the same every night of the show. We can improvise and be spontaneous. I utilize that a lot. I always get new ideas I like to try out. It's important that the show is beautiful and reflects the mood if the songs. I like to think if my show as inside of a snow globe."
(This is an expanded version of a piece that ran in the Boston Herald and 
