Jackie Leven: Forbidden Songs of the Dying West (Cooking Vinyl – Amigo)

The short review (column “Musikk”, signed “Ved Helge Barane”, Jærbladet, 14 February 1996, in Nynorsk) sits between reviews of Jah Wobble, Joan Osborne, Runrig and Nick Cave's Murder Ballads. The reviewer says he is writing about the album “for the second time” because no record shop in Bryne has yet had it, or Leven's previous album, on its shelves: “a great shame”. It is one of the “absolutely, decidedly strongest” records of the previous year, in any genre. The 1994 record The Mystery of Love Is Greater Than the Mystery of Death, on the same label, is more majestic and stronger still; that almost nobody in the Jæren district knows these two “masterpieces” is a “great mystery” to him.

He then relays claims that largely rest on Leven's self-presentation: Leven is “one of Bob Dylan's biggest favourites”, the two have composed songs together, and Dylan was a guest throughout the whole studio session. This echoes a legend spread by Leven's circle at the time and is not substantiated. Leven was also the singer of the fabled Doll by Doll, whose “fine records from the eighties” are hopefully due on CD before summer 1996. The sentence on what Leven's two solo records ought to sell breaks off at the column break.