First Aid Kit - The Big Black and the Blue

First Aid Kit
The Big Black and The Blue

The maturity of their sound belies the fact that Swedish folk singers and sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg are 16 and 19 respectively. The duo make good on the promise shown in their Drunken Trees EP to deliver an album that is timeless, haunting and beautiful. It is their captivating, soaring vocals which first let you know that you’re listening to something special.

The enchanting opening track ‘In The Morning’ showcases the stunning combination of their pure soprano and husky alto voices, creating an otherworldly and spine-tingling atmosphere that reflects gothic imagery about a man drowned at sea (Sample lyric: In the oceans where you lay where they made your grave/They’ll find you on the shore rosy no more). Their sound (particularly on the opening track) reminds you very much of those fellow fans of close-harmony Fleet Foxes (they actually did a great cover of ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’) and Midlake, and also recalls albums such as Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins’ Rabbit Fur Heart.

There is a feeling with this album too that eschews modernity and offers a kind of therapeutic escape from the hectic pace of the 21st century. Their music takes on aspects of traditional sounds such as Appalachian mountain music, sea shanties and folk balladry, utilising much neglected instruments like the organ, auto-harp and mandolin. While their pastoral imagery of mountains, birds, the sea and the moon, as well as preachers, demons and rail-roads means they could be singing about nearly any time in the past century. This fact, along with the narrative bent of their lyrics, also recalls the music of Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen (one of their confessed original inspirations), Vashti Bunyan, Marissa Naedler , Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Laura Veirs (who is also a confirmed First Aid Kit fan).

Highlights of the album include the sublime and wistful ‘Heavy Storm’, a song about disillusionment (I wish I could believe in something bigger, more than these trees, these winds, these oceans/I wish I could believe what they tell me), regret about losing a brother and regret about not appreciating past moments.

As in ‘In The Morning’ and ‘Heavy Storm’, First Aid Kit are at their best in melancholy gothic mood as evidenced by other highlight ‘Winter Is All Over You’, which mourns the loss of a lover with its evocative pleading refrain of “Don’t leave this world to meâ€?; and which has a nice use of the humble glockenspiel. It also ends in a lovely more hopeful transition to the singers using ascending ‘ahs’ over sampled strings.

But their songs are not all doom and gloom; for instance, ‘Hard Believer’ is a more upbeat song, an atheist anthem if you will about living life for the sake of loving it and not for God (Well I see you’ve got your bible your delusion imagery/Well I don’t need your eternity or your meaning to feel free). While ‘Josefin’ is a lovely little ditty, featuring the delicate medieval-sound of aforementioned auto-harp, about encouraging a friend not to lose hope, fighting those ‘demons’ and taking strength from family.

If there is one problem with this album, it is that it does seem quite samey at points, like they have stuck to a template of set chords and strummed rhythms, but given that this is their first album and they are still so young it is maybe to be expected. It is still a remarkable release for a pair of teenagers and they can only develop from here. For now, if you still want to be genuinely moved by something passionate and yearning, you definitely won’t go far wrong by listening to this album.

The Big Black and the Blue is out now on Wichita.

Priscilla Eyles