I’ve experienced a spate of vivid dreams of late—or, more likely, I’m simply remembering them when I wake. Here’s one: I’m navigating the packed waiting area at the TGI Fridays restaurant of my (relative) youth, but as the me of now. Mumbles from the crowd all but drown out the background music, with just its incessant rhythm breaking through the din. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Boom, boom, boom. The mass of people parts and there, standing before me, is a woman I simultaneously recognize and don’t. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Boom, boom, boom. “Jeffrey, it’s me! Lynn!” she cries.
It’s the former manager I toiled under, off and on, for near two years in the mid-1980s, when I worked in the domestics department at the same mall-based department store where my mom worked as the store nurse. (Lynn’s main claim to fame: Her grandfather was an “untouchable”—as in Eliot Ness and The Untouchables—who battled the Chicago mob.) She steps to me, wraps me in a hug. “I was sorry to hear about your mother,” she says. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Boom, boom, boom.
When I beamed aboard the Penn State mothership in the late summer of 1985, she forgot me not—there was always a slot available to me on weekends and holidays when I needed one. But I forgot about her in the decades since until Diane and I watched St. Elmo’s Fire for the first time a few years back; Demi Moore’s character—or, more to the point, Moore’s look in that film—reminded me of her. They could’ve been twins.
Thwack, thwack, thwack. My eyes open; the clock reads 4am. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Tyler the Cat is smacking me with his paw. Thwack, thwack, thwack. He follows the sun, not DST. And he wants breakfast. Now. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Boom, boom, boom. His rhythm is the same as the song in the dream, which I now hear loud and clear in my inner ear—“Entropy,” the lead track on Malin Pettersen’s forthcoming album, Trouble Finding Words, which I’ve been enjoying for the past week.
The song, it should be noted, digs into the state of life and relationships: “What if it’s all just a second that seems like forever/what if it’s all just a joke taken seriously/if there isn’t nothing to hold onto we could just let go/letting go makes me feel like I’m losing my mind….”
It and the 10 songs that follow mark a departure from the country style she cultivated on her previous outings. At times, it’s Pop with a capital P, conjuring the sounds and songs of the 1990s (and even ‘80s) that she grew up with. Yet it’s not as dramatic a departure as one might expect. Sure, tectonic forces have shifted the soundscape, but the songs themselves explore the same basic themes; she’s just borrowing from a different dictionary to express herself. In that sense, to name two stylistic shifts off the top of my head, it’s akin to Maria McKee’s Life Is Sweet or Kasey Chambers’ Carnival. But as anyone who knows those albums can attest, each is well worth many listens. At times, too, it reminds me of Paul Weller’s Fat Pop—it embraces a similar pop ethos.
Back to the story: I roll out of bed and head to the kitchen, giving in: It’s what I do every day with the feline overlord since he fell ill. The lush opening of “Who I Am,” another track from Trouble Finding Words, ricochets through my head. It’s an odd comparison, I’m sure, but it sounds like Kasey Chambers fronting Spandau Ballet—or perhaps Pettersen herself fronting TGC (aka the Green Children) or A-ha. Either/or, one listen to that voice, and the emotion that lives within it, and you’re sucked in.
The album features an array of guest spots, including Stefanos Yowhannes on the soulful “Crying,” Fieh’s Sofie Tollefsbøl on “Lost You,” Mall Girl’s Beth MacBride on “Life” and 17-year-old Bergljot Bjella on “Cry If I Want To,” with each taking a turn on the microphone. “Life” may well be the album’s piece de resistance, but Bjella comes close to stealing the show.
Fans of Pettersen’s previous work may be taken aback at first listen. I was. But the more time spent with these songs, the more they connect with one’s soul. There’s heartbreak, heartache, and the need for human touch, and songs that bounce around the back of the brain until they show up in dreams. You can’t ask more than that.
The Old Grey Cat 
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