Having been nominated for Denmark’s prestigious Gaffa award for Best Female Artist twice in three years in 2012 and 2014; and having been the recipient of the Bands of Tomorrow ‘Pop Artist Of The Year’ award in 2013, Penny Police’s releases to date have been showered with four and five star reviews across the board that laud her musicality, and her ability to conjure melodies so light, pure and delicately delivered as though they were made from the hydrogen atoms teased from a teardrop.
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With her personalised brand of poetic and ambient art-pop, Marie Fjeldsted (aka Penny Police) is an artist so steeped in empathy, warmth and humanity you’d be forgiven for thinking she’d seen the inside of your private journal. Her warm, almost whispery voice gently guides the listener through her ballads, songs which are often based on found footage: conversations overheard, television clips – pieces otherwise forgotten.
Marie built on the solid press support in Denmark for The Broken, The Beggar, The Thief (A:larm/Universal) and Sink Or Sail (VME) with a stunning performance at SPOT festival in 2014. That orchestral show for Join Forces, an EP recorded in collaboration with Danish composer/arranger Signe Lykke, prompted Mojo to enthuse that “Penny Police is way ahead in the way she thinks about music…” She also received rave reviews for her performances at Malmö Festival and Iceland Airwaves, with one review from The New York Grapevine proffering “{PP was} … truly one of the most beautiful female vocalists at Iceland Airwaves … Marie Fjeldsted’s vocals will send chills up your spine. Frank lyrics about adult needs, desires … with world class musicians.”
While quick to profess her love for the music of Ane Brun, and coming from an imaginary family tree that might also include Susanne Sundfør and Lydmor at their most intimate, Marie has always drawn inspiration more from her own life than any heroes. She has a unique ability to distil a rainbow of emotions into a few lines, and an uncanny knack for writing songs that cut through the static of life and hit you beneath the ribcage. Writing primarily around the keyboard, that combination of pure voice and lyrical clarity, blended with her own musical eccentricities, keeps on making her new fans. Following one London show last year the NSPCC adopted ‘I Do Care’ as the anthem for their ‘Safe and Sound’ campaign online, and on TV across the UK.
New single ‘Fool Like Me’ is a gem of minimal electronics meeting orchestral sounds in a very beautiful mid-point with vocal similarities to Lana Del Ray and follows ‘No Horizon’ which has been gaining P6 plays in Denmark and praiseworthy quotes from the likes of The Line Of Best Fit and Amazing Radio in the UK. Both are taken from the forthcoming highly anticipated ‘Penny Police’ EP due out later this year.
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