Album Review

First Aid Kit – Sailor Song

• 6th Jul 2010

There’s something extremely appealing about these two young lasses from Stockholm. Their music is forthright, strident, earnest and completely unpretentious.

The songs are simple, and contain a rawness and naivete that is probably due to their age – the eldest is still only 20. But, at the risk of sounding patronising, this only makes them all the more adorable. This is folk, plain and simple. Not overly produced or jazzed up for the charts, just heartfelt songs delivered with heartbreakingly beautiful voices.

Sailor Song is the third single release from Klara and Johanna Söderberg’s debut album The Big Black & The Blue. It starts soft, slow and spare, with clear-as-a-bell vocals and simple strings. Then it picks up into a jaunty tune that is, to quote … erm … one of the Osmonds, a little bit country. At the same time, the angelic harmonies kick in, and it all gets rather fun, albeit in a lover-left-behind-grudgingly-resigned-to-her-loss kind of way.

Sailor Song is fragmented into simple and direct sections, with various changes in timing, so it does stop and start a little, and lacks the drive and clarity of their previous single I Met Up With the King. But the variety is nice too. This is a song that mixes things up a bit, keeps us interested.

And interested is what we should remain. First Aid Kit’s honest and open approach seems to reflect their personalities more than anything else, and if they can hold on to this while their songwriting skills develop and mature, we could be hearing some rather special stuff from these two over the next few years.