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Virna Lindt \ Shiver [LTMCD 2487]

An extended remaster of Shiver, the debut album by Swedish pop sophisticate Virna Lindt, originally released by The Compact Organisation in 1983.

Written and produced by Virna Lindt and Tot Taylor, Shiver delivers 13 slices of chic, Cold War pop informed by 1960s spy thriller soundtracks and musique concrete. Featured singles include Attention Stockholm and I Experienced Love. This expanded edition features 3 bonus tracks, including The Windmills of Your Mind, a Michel Legrand cover originally recorded for the Crépuscule movie compilation Moving Soundtracks.

The CD also features a deluxe 12 page booklet featuring original artwork and a detailed dossier on Virna Lindt.

Tracklist:

1. Attention Stockholm
2. Shiver
3. Pillow Talk
4. Swedish Modern
5. I Beat the System
6. The Dossier On Virna Lindt
7. Episode One
8. Intelligence
9. Underwater Boy
10. Letter to Sergei
11. The Windmills of Your Mind
12. Groom
13. I Experienced Love

Available on 2xCD, 2xLP and digital (MP3 or FLAC). To order LP or CD please first select correct shipping option (UK, Europe, Rest of World) and then click on Add To Cart button below cover image. Digital copies are delivered to customers via link sent by email.

Reviews:

"Intrepid undercover agent disguised as a top international fashion model sets out on a secret mission behind the Iron Curtain, armed only with a firm sense of fair play and a gadget-filled powder compact" (NME)

"Euro-eccentric. Virna Lindt casts herself as a mysterious blonde in a loving pastiche of Continental movie music" (Sounds)

"Only the surly amongst you can fail to acknowledge the splendour of Virna Lindt's new single I Experienced Love single, and the equally thrilling Shiver LP, the epitome of Compact's sleek, chic Sixties tease" (The Face)

"Imagine a pastiche of all those old Sixties spy series, like Danger Man, The Avengers and The Man From Uncle. Well, this would be the perfect soundtrack to go with it" (London Evening Standard)

"I shouldn't be liking it, but this pop-corn is irresistible" (NME)

"Virna Lindt epitomized the Compact mix of sophistication and kitsch. Her songs are ripe with allusions to international espionage and Bergman films, her vocals whispered atop backing tracks of cool jazz, sound collage, and vintage soundtrack gestures. If you are the sort of music lover who can name every Bond girl, this stuff is for you" (The Stranger, 06/2007)

"The illusion that Virna Lindt perpetrates is circular: Swedish translation student pretending to be a jet-set model revealed as a spy masquerading as a singer (and so on). Visually, her fabulous appeal is that of a Gerry & Sylvia Anderson prototype action doll come to life and gone undercover, maybe one of the Angel fighter pilots from the Captain Scarlet series. All that would be mere pap if the music didn't add up to more than an exercise in style. But, after a quarter of a century, the simple integrity of the arrangements and her unruffled vocal style deserve to be brought in from the cold. Shiver harks back to a fun time when tiny labels like The Compact Organisation looked like they could rule the world of pop. If only..." (Brainwashed, 2007)

"Thanks to the chance meeting of translation student Virna Lindt and Compact label guru Tot Taylor on a train, as the liner notes to the reissue of Shiver explain, Lindt and Compact first made its mark with the nervy John Barry-meets-new wave mania of Attention Stockholm, the single which also leads off her debut album as a whole. Spy atmospherics permeate the album and not just in sound - thus song titles like The Dossier on Virna Lindt and Letter to Sergei. But while Lindt and her musical collaborators (led by Taylor, credited among other things with playing "Bond guitars") are definitely enamored of a mythical jet-set past where dapper secret agents are busy running around space age sets with a drink in hand, there's actually less per se retro about Shiver than many other albums that followed in its wake - instead of simply cool styles, things at times feel nervous, jittery, a response to a time and place (early '80s UK grimness, in the music scene and real life) that's of the moment. That said, the moody-start-of-the-film feeling of Episode One practically begs to soundtrack a sequence where Dirk Bogarde hauls a body out of the Seine. Lindt herself acts less as the lead singer and more as the narrator of her own adventures, a Modesty Blaise running rampant and occasional striking reflective poses amid orchestral swells and energetic percussion. When she does take a more formal lead singing role, she comes across as a bit light if not unpleasantly so, as on Pillow Talk. Meantime, the jaunty piano-led kick of I Beat the System and the moody '70s rather than '60s lounge-ness of Underwater Boy shows that there's more here than a restrictive stereotype" (All Music Guide, 2007)