Time
"This 24 year old Norwegian has a powerhouse voice.... Ida Maria turns her lyrics into epic drama."

Product Description
Born and raised in the icy Norwegian stillness of the Arctic Circle, Ida Maria brought a new cool to the top of the pops when her first single release in the UK, "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked" hit #13 on the national chart and sent her debut album, FORTRESS ROUND MY HEART straight inside the Top 40.

FORTRESS ROUND MY HEART - which drew 4 star UK reviews in Q magazine and The Guardian - has now been signed to Mercury Records, and will be distributed by Fontana in a close collaboration with a March 24th digital release. "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked" was officially released as a digital single in the U.S. earlier this week (on February 24th). Ida Maria's song "Oh My God" will be used in all the Gossip Girl promos for this season. Originally airing 2/23, the promos will continue for months ahead!

On the heels of her 30-show, sold-out headlining UK tour in November, four critically acclaimed showcases in Los Angeles and New York, and NME's prestigious Shockwaves Awards show earlier this month - Ida Maria and her band (Stefan Törnby on lead guitar, bassist Johannes Lindberg, drummer Olle Lundin) will play their first U.S. tour in March. Kickoff is the South By Southwest (SXSW) Music and Media Confer­ence in Austin, Texas, March 18-22. Dates will continue in New Orleans, Atlanta, Washington DC, West Chester (PA), Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Boston. Ida Maria will return to the U.S. for a performance at the Coachella Festival in California on April 18th.

24-year old Ida (pronounced ee-dah) Maria grew up in Nesna, Norway, a university town of fewer than 2000 people north of the 66th latitude. When she moved to the great city of Bergen as a teen, she rubbed shoulders with everyone from metal bands to avant garde jazz musicians and bluegrass singer-songwriters. There she "discovered the inner beast that was hiding in my vocal chords." At the same time, she developed into a formidable songwriter, informed by a benign variant of synaesthesia, a rare condition in which perception in one sense mode arouses imagery from another, so that one can see sounds or hear colors, for example.

Following the success of "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked," "Oh My God" was issued as a new single, and earned a 4 star review from RollingStone.com. Time magazine placed the song at # 3 on their "Top Ten List of Everything in 2008," praising her "powerhouse voice - deep, commanding, a little masculine, exotic, too, like Nico, but with an abundance rather than an absence of feeling."

1. Oh My God
2. Morning Light
3. I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked
4. Stella
5. Keep Me Warm
6. Forgive Me
7. Queen Of The World
8. Louie
9. Drive Away My Heart
10. In The End

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001V7UXB2/?tag=imwan-20

I'm in a program with Amazon called Vine where they send me stuff occasionally to review. I got this one a couple weeks back. While it's not something I would have normally checked out, if you're into punk or alt rock this is good stuff. The single Oh My God is really good.

Here's the review I put up on Amazon,

"For the sake of full disclosure, I'm a 51 year old man & this isn't a genre I spend much time with these days. Still, something in Amazon's description intrigued me & I decided to check it out. The best recommendation I can give is that after 4 listens, I plan to keep this in my collection & play it from time to time - it's good stuff!

Think of a punkier EARLY Pretenders with a bit of Bjork (for weird Euro rock) & Roxette (for catchy power pop) thrown in. The single Oh My God is really good, she has a good sense of humor, & is brave enough to allow her voice to totally break up making an emotional statement at the end of Stella.

In my opinion, the 1st 3 songs are a bit better then the rest of the album, but for alt rock fans I definitely recommend this one. If the record co's give her a chance to grow as an artist, she's got a career to look forward to! 3 1/2 Stars from this old guy; I suspect a younger person would rate it higher!"