Brassy but Beautiful…

Occasional Albums Thing 067 - First Aid Kit “The Big Black & The Blue”

I first stumbled upon First Aid Kit on YouTube. They have this thing in Sweden called the Polar Music Prize. It was inaugurated by Stig Anderson, best known as ABBA’s manager, and is awarded annually to one contemporary musician and one classical musician for significant achievements in music. I came across a YouTube clip of the great Emmylou Harris being awarded the prize in 2015 and up on stage were First Aid Kit performing their song “Emmylou” (“I'll be your Emmylou and I'll be your June, If you'll be my Gram and my Johnny too”) and reducing the actual Emmylou to tears. 

I then found another YouTube video of Paul Simon being awarded the prize in 2012. Once again First Aid Kit were wheeled out to perform a frankly astonishing version of Simon & Garfunkel’s song “America”. It was at this point I thought “Sweden, it’s really not fair to keep awarding all these legends a prize and then flooring them by having First Aid Kit sing their song back to them, you’re just showing off aren’t you ?” ! And that wasn’t the first time ! The previous year First Aid Kit had performed “Dancing Barefoot” when the great Patti Smith was awarded the prize.

Then,  some time later, in the pub (and we all know the best ideas start in the pub...right ?) I heard "Stay Gold" and the rest, as they say... 

First Aid Kit are a duo of Swedish sisters, Johanna and Klara Söderberg, who make “Country”/Folk influenced music while singing the most devastating harmonies. “The Big Black & The Blue” is their 2010 debut album.

We begin with “In The Morning”, a couple of gently strummed acoustic guitar chords give way to Klara and Johanna harmonising acapella, the perfect introduction to their, at times brassy but, together, beautiful voices. The influence of Emmylou Harris is immediately obvious. The Söderberg sisters voices are not as sweet as Emmylou’s but the way they harmonise together raises the ghost of Gram and Emmylou.

“Sailor Song” starts with Johanna strumming on the autoharp, a little used instrument bought to prominence in the 1940’s by the Carter Family’s "Mother" Maybelle Carter. Talking of little used instruments “Ghost Town” is carried along by what sounds very much like a Harmonium (there are no instrument credits on the sleeve so I can’t say definitively or say how I know it might be a Harmonium). I also like that on a couple of songs one of the voices counts in in Swedish, “ett, två, tre…ett, två, tre” rather than yer bog standard “one, two, three…one, two, three”…yes there are two songs on this album in Waltz time, “Waltz For Richard”, obviously, and “A Window Opens”.

This is very much an acoustic folk album, there are drums and bass guitar but both sit politely in the background, with a big helping of Country style, but Country in the form of American Folk music and not “my dog gone left me” Rhinestone spangled Country. In places it reminds me in style and subject matter (oceans, sailors, ghosts, waltzing, rivers and strangely monikered protagonists) of The Decemberists and if you’ve been reading this Blog for a while you’ll know what I think about them.

Klara and Johanna’s voices captivate me completely. Klara’s lead a touch hard on this record but with a little catch on certain notes, always smoothed out by Johanna’s beautiful harmonising. This is a record that’s all about the voices, there’s no virtuoso instrumental-ing here and for me, it’s about the way they sing together rather than what they are singing that’s most important.

There are some songs on “The Big Black & The Blue” where I feel like I’m left waiting a little too long for Johanna and her harmonies to arrive, hate to say it but Klara (at this point in time) doesn’t have a voice interesting enough to carry a whole song, never mind an album, she needs her sister to make this thing complete. Johanna and Klara’s voices and harmonising are at all points the focus of the songs so let’s just say they hadn’t quite got their arrangement skills up to snuff, it is their first album after all.

In The Morning - https://youtu.be/iXgDpk1hML8?si=fqOT3YmQ4Jk5VTol

(BTW YouTube is awash with videos of First Aid Kit covering great songs and I’d recommend you have a listen to their take on “Waterloo Sunset”,  Emmylou’s “Red Dirt Girl” (another performance from the Polar Music Awards) and Dylan’s “With God On Our Side”, they are all superb...they even do Black Sabbath !