Teitur (Tie-tor) Lassen, is a man from the Faroe Islands who turns music into magic beautifully and effortlessly.
In 2002, Teitur was signed by the legendary Doug Morris to Universal Records in the US and in 2003, Teitur released his first album, Poetry & Aeroplanes. Its simple, sincere songs made it a critical hit. He toured the USA and Canada extensively, performed on American chat shows, watched as his songs got snapped up for film soundtracks (My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Aquamarine), and attracted the attention of respected singer-songwriters like Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann and John Mayer, all of whom took him on tour. John Mayer said of the album in Esquire Magazine: “it may be one of the best albums to come around in the last five years”. A real fanbase developed and the album became a cult hit, and rave reviews for gigs helped grow the story. During this time, he managed to co-write a song on the 4 million selling debut album by Corinne Bailey Rae.
In 2006, unhappy with the label's plans for his future, Teitur left Universal. He and his manager Christian started their own label, Arlo and Betty Recordings (after his 2 guitars). He released Stay Under The Stars in the same year, a record full of richer writing and bolder characters, which went Gold in Denmark, spawning the radio hit, Louis Louis, and established him in Scandinavia and built his reputation across Continental Europe, with main stage appearances at Roskilde (opening the Festival with Radiohead in 2008), Benicassim, etc. By 2008, he had completed 700 gigs in 20 countries in 4 years, which earned him the reputation of one of the hardest working artists on the road.
In 2007, Teitur fulfilled a lifetime ambition by releasing an album in his mother tongue, Kata Hornid, before beginning work in late that year on The Singer, recorded in a Swedish Princesses house in Gotland, released in 2008 in Europe and early 2009 in the UK, his first album to be issued in Britain.
It garnered five star reviews in The Guardian ("deep, viscous stuff that is never less than extraordinary") and The Independent ("a rare beast"), while the Sunday Times praised the singer-songwriter's " wonderfully idiosyncratic talent". The Singer was presented as a glorious introduction to a shining new star, but few of us knew that there had been many other brilliant records before it. Radio 2's Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie loved this song so much they invited Teitur in for a session earlier last year, helping his reputation grow.
Then in October 2009, the UK only release album 'All My Mistakes', a kind of “introduction to/best of” took us through the last seven years of Teitur's glittering career and revealed the marvellous jewels from his back catalogue. Achieving his second Album of The Week in The Independent, Andy Gill wrote of the album:
“there's more than enough evidence here to bear out Teitur's assertion, in the title-track, that "all my mistakes have become masterpieces".
Teitur continued his career development in many ways, producing and writing for a major French artist, Nolwenn,; co-writing and performing with Contemporary film musician Nico Muhly (who scored The Reader), writing for other artists and all the time continued writing songs for his next album.
During early 2010, Teitur recorded his stunning new album "Let the Dog drive home" in Denmark and mixed in Norway, an album which combines the quality of songs from his first album, with the broad appeal of his second, and some of the coolness of the third, The Singer. The album is scheduled for release in Continental Europe on the 4th October 2010.
