It’s hard to think of a songwriter who more honestly reflects the bewildering coexistence in the enraptured heart of joy and melancholy than Magnet’s Evan Johansen. The Norwegian first displayed this talent on 2003’s On Your Side; on its successor, he returns to the duality, suffusing songs apparently inspired by ardour with killer key shifts and shards of lyrical ambiguity that speak of darker emotions. Thus, on the nursery rhyme-like The Pacemaker, he pays tribute to an unnamed helpmeet, then utters the line: “Only you can hold me like a tourniquet.” Perhaps the greatest of Johansen’s qualities is his elusiveness — admittedly, not something much treasured in artists, from whom the voyeur in us requires a degree of revelation. With his quavering tenor and genre-defying blend of country, MOR and electronica — and communicating, on highlights such as Believe and Duracellia, the sense of a heart more heavy than giddy with love — Johansen charts his own course, with haunting results.

Atlantic

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