Scandinavian Blues: Ane Brun

Photos by Anders Widlund

WHEN LISTENING TO ANE BRUN'S MUSIC, it's easy to think of her as the anti-DiFranco. Where Brun's folky music is subtle and delicate, Ani DiFranco's songs are overt, from her heavy acoustic-guitar strumming to her I-am-woman-hear-my-roar lyrics and vocals.

Yet it was DiFranco's music that helped Brun find her own.

"I tried to learn her stuff," said Brun, who plays Tuesday evening at the House of Sweden. "The way she thinks when she does a song very much influenced me in a way. When I got my first guitar, it was the same period that I got my first CDs with singer-songwriters — acoustic guitars and vocals. And I think the first one I got was 'Blue' by Joni Mitchell. But then a friend of mine came to my house with [an Ani DiFranco] CD; it was the 'Dilate' album. It's really quite aggressive guitar playing, which I really liked. I don't do that, though."

Unlike DiFranco, the Molde, Norway-born, Stockholm, Sweden-residing Brun usually creates fingerpicked filigrees to create a low-light, late-night sound. And her artful, almost detached way of singing imbues her mostly depressing lyrics with power rather than self-pity or strident declarations. Even when she goes for a simplistic rhyme, the beauty of Brun's voice, and the almost distracted way she uses it, makes her lyrics come across as poignant rather than obvious.

That's not to say Brun isn't emotional in her delivery; she's just not overwrought. (Imagine an English-folk-loving Billie Holiday.)

One of Brun's most striking songs is "Rubber & Soul," which can be heard in three different versions: done solo on the Scandinavian edition of her 2005 album "A Temporary Dive"; as a duet with Danish singer Teitur on the 2006 CD "Duets" and the U.S. edition of "A Temporary Dive"; and with strings on the new "Live in Scandinavia." (All of Brun's albums are co-released by DetErMine, the label she runs with two friends).

"Rubber & Soul" opens with the naked lines, "In my mind I'm crawling on your floor / Vomiting and defeated."

While the image of a broken woman lying on the ground in her own mess is a difficult one, the song's most haunting lines follow:

"Total absence of grace / Your reluctant voice saying, 'You decide your own fate,'" delivered from a callous lover or heartless friend hovering over this helpless human like a disgusted bully.

When asked if she feels vulnerable by revealing such scenes in her songs, Brun said, "It's usually the first time I play [a song live] that I have that confrontation with myself. Like, 'Oh, [crap], these are my words.' But at the same time, I feel that even though they are intimate, they don't really tell so much about me. They tell about a feeling or a situation. So it's not like people can say, 'Oh, that happened to her.'"

But that's what listeners do: We imagine that the words being sung are from the vocalist's experience. (When Bad Company's Paul Rodgers sings, "Feel like makin' love," we assume — and rightfully so — that it's him who's doin' the do, not some character.)

Even though Brun feels some distance from what she's singing, we listeners do not — and that's mostly fine with her.

"I get a lot of e-mails and letters from people who say that the songs have helped them a lot, so they go into [the tunes] themselves," she said. "And that's what I hope by writing the songs kind of universal — that people can put their own things into them and take the focus off me. I don't want people to get access to my personal life. But I want people to hear some poetry and see if they can get something out of it."

» House of Sweden, 901 30th St. NW; Tue., 6:45 p.m. doors, $5; 202-467-2643. (Foggy Bottom-GWU)