Jagadamba Records- Released 23/02/09

Hailing from Sweden with a combined age of just 34, sisters Johanna (18) and Klara (16) Soderberg make up the new folk act, First Aid Kit.  Nothing too ridiculous about that you say; music’s a young persons game, innit?  But what will certainly surprise is the worn-out nature of the tracks on their ‘Drunken Trees’ mini album.  Bubblegum Euro-Pop this most certainly is not but mature-beyond-its-years, heartfelt floaty folk inspired by the Baez’s and Dylan’s of this world.

‘You’re Not Coming Home Tonight’, the strongest song and the closest they’ve got to a sing-a-long, tells the story of a decaying marriage with startling insightfulness.  Opening with ‘yeah you cooked his dinners/and you raised his children/and still he’s not satisfied/he says I’d rather switch with you/you down know hard it is to work from nine to five’ , the girls set a gloriously gloomy tone despite the chirpy, simply guitar plucking away.  Whether they have a prodigiously intuitive grasp of failing human relationships or just really like Desperate Housewives I’m not sure, but it is very impressive.  The song casts no light on whether the couple will survive, but they seem to sum up the hopeful against the odds sense of a failing marriage with ‘the future’s unclear/ but hopefully it will be fine.’   The fact it’s all sung in lovely harmonies of which the Fleet Foxes would be proud make it all the better, and it’s really rather excellent.

So, failing marriages done then? Er...no.  Following this is ‘Tangerine’, which tells the sad story of a man that it would appear is cheating on his stay-at-home, from her perspective. It’s pretty heartbreaking, as she bemoans her man who comes home ‘late at night/smelling like Tangerine.’  Saddest of all is the protagonist’s sense of (brilliantly observed) self doubt, which she shows by saying ‘apparently I’m not good enough/ I can’t make you laugh like Tangerine.’  So still she waits for up for her man and begs him to ‘please, please, be good to me.’  Again, freakishly mature blah blah blah.

‘Our Own Pretty Ways’  doesn’t up the Happy Level particularly, with its opening lines of ‘lets not spill the truth/its easier being alone/your’e a shadow of the old/ and I want something new.’  The vocal on this tune is more rounded, less dreamy and pure Joan Baez.  It makes a nice contrast with some of the other songs, like ‘Jagadamba, You Might’ and ‘Perviglio’, the latter which is another heartbreaker, no more so than during the almost whispered vocal ‘I can’t help it/you’re so beautiful.’

So yah, it’s all very good on ‘Drunken Trees.’  You sense that with the popularity of lo-fi folk sounds at the moment, these girls are more suited to being the feminine counterpoint of Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver than the bleepy Lykke Li.  Lets just hope they have happier love lives than the characters in their songs.

 
What do you think of the new folk explosion?  Is there any other newbies we should be looking at? Are you in a folk band and want to be put into our gig listings???

Posted In Album Reviews, Feb 24 2009. Words - Tom