{"id":2752,"date":"2020-09-18T08:57:18","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T07:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=2752"},"modified":"2020-09-18T08:57:20","modified_gmt":"2020-09-18T07:57:20","slug":"first-aid-kit-contains-healing-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2020\/09\/18\/first-aid-kit-contains-healing-music\/","title":{"rendered":"FIRST AID KIT CONTAINS HEALING MUSIC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FIRST AID KIT CONTAINS HEALING MUSIC<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Norman Warwick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Ruins by First Aid Kit<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As a teenager, when my love of the country music that was to become Americana was my guilty, and very much secret, pleasure I was too embarrassed to admit to being a country and western fan lest I be damned by the preconceptions of others about c & w being all about suited and booted cowboys and 100 dollar perm cowgirls singing about how dusty their country roads could be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt a bit more cool when c &w became country, but became more than a little schizophrenic when that became alt-country, though a current classification of Americana has now, I think, provided me with a permanent home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Saving country music, if that has now been achieved, has been brought about by such fine lines of classification, and even a little bit of mis-appropriation here and there from other genres. At one time I thought the Austin enclave like Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle might be our saviours but at other times I pinned hopes on big balladeers like Mickey Newbury. My kind of country girls have always been ladies like Emmylou, Dolly, Linda Rondstadt and from a younger generation the likes of Nanci Griffith, Katy Moffatt and Mary Chapin Carpenter. (right)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have no right to expect artists to ride to our rescue, though. Riders are meant to commodify, mis-appropriate and fuse to create new forms. They are not supposed to simply re-heat the genre until the world decides it is too tepid to warrant further attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I first became a big fan of American singer-writer Tom Pacheco I wasn\u00b4t sure, nor too concerned, as to whether he was folk or country but when he recorded a few songs with a Norwegian singer writer, Steinar Albrigsten, I was surprised to learn there was an enclave of country music clubs over there in Steinar\u00b4s glaciers and fjords and that Pacheco played at them. Nevertheless, I loved the album Tom and Steinar recorded, and I classified it as country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First Aid Kit<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I shouldn\u00b4t be too surprised, therefore, to have learned recently that for the last couple of years ago the female duo of First Aid Kit among nominations to become the next saviours of country music. They are, though, sisters from Sweden and, as such, perform below the radar of the average American Roots Consumer. They don\u00b4t quite kick enough arse for country (& western) lovers, are a bit too thoughtful for pop music fans and also, too involved for folk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was told the above by an on-line reviewer who went on to say that \u00b4the muse of the sisters instead traces it\u2019s own path forward somewhere above it all\u00b4 readers of the on-line site were told, \u00b4as one of archaic music forms conveyed through a modern, but still roots-entwined perspective.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reviewer added that \u00b4The S\u00f6derberg sisters don\u2019t just sing, they soar. Their harmonies are so angelic and adept, the siblings come across more like deities than entertainers, untouchable and ethereal, blessed with immortal capacities, and brought to the Earth only to convey their wisdom in sonnet and rhyme. You fancy they\u2019re more fantastic than real\u2014Johanna\u2019s face like that of a porcelain sculpture, Klara\u2019s insight like that of an ancient ancestor, and the conjoining of their voices in harmony almost too pure for earth-bound ears.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In case that seems to you to hyperbola write even larger than usual I should tell, that I had never heard of the band until six weeks ago, when I caught them \u00b4by accident\u00b4 in some sort of zoom performance of a couple of songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right place, right place and right time and all that but they absolutely \u00b4stoned me just like jelly roll\u00b4, so I started searching out their stuff on line and came across Ruins, and haven\u00b4t stopped playing it since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To spill words like angelic, untouchable, ethereal and immortal into any review of them is perhaps even to damn them with faint praise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had heard the album before reading the review on the savingcountrymusic web-site, and so didn\u00b4t find that overblown in any way, but if you have doubts you need to resolve find any of the youtube performances First Aid Kit have broadcast since the rise of coronavirus.  I\u00b4m confident you\u00b4ll find that description is damned accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruins, was actually their fourth full-length record, and on it primary songwriter Klara S\u00f6derberg chose to show that however angelic they might sound their songs do indeed bleed human blood. In many ways  a traditional breakup record, Ruins chronicled the onset of emotions brought on by Klara\u2019s separation from a recent beau, and reflected some sibling tension within the band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

savingcountrymusic described the album as emerging after an elongated period where the sisters decided to take some time off to catch their breath after a rapturous ascent starting when the two were still teenagers. The reviewer therefore described Ruins as \u00b4an exhalation of thoughts as they enter a more stable era of early adulthood.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America cannot stake sole claim to this roots band, and so share First Aid Kit with other ports of call, primarily their native Sweden, and the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Yet Ruins also had a decidedly American thread woven into its narrative,\u00b4 I was told at this excellently written site. \u00b4Produced by Tucker Martine of My Morning Jacket fame, it was recorded in Portland, Oregon at Flora Studios, and featured appearances by American musicians Peter Buck of REM, and Wilco\u2019s Glenn Kotche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, Klara and Johanna wrote the album while staying in Los Angeles, with Southern California\u2019s sunny disposition contrasting with the sister pair\u2019s dour moods.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Ruins has a handful of riches to add to the duo\u2019s already impressive resume of musical moments\u00b4 the reviewer continued, meaning those times where you don\u2019t just enjoy a song or lyric, but a literal shiver runs down the back of your spine, and you emerge from the listening experience a changed person, whether in a mild or monumentous capacity. It\u2019s the crescendos, the sage perspective conveyed in the verses, and the serving of it all with such precise taste and individuality that make First Aid Kit much more than just another Americana band.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u00b4m not sure I could have articulated it as well as that, but they were similar to the thoughts I had again recently when seeing another of their lockdown \u00b4virtual\u00b4 performances<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be said though that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.savingcountrymusic.com\/album-review-first-aid-kits-ruins\/<\/a> certainly did not find this album flawless and felt that its \u00b4moments\u00b4 were few and farther between than on their previous albums. Nevertheless the reviewer conceded that Ruins still contained  plenty of reasons why it would have been such a tragedy if First Aid Kit hadn\u2019t made it through the personal turmoil to this point. The fact that making music is very hard is expertly hidden by brilliant musicians who make it appear so easy. The repetitiveness, the travel, the closeness with one another, the emotional toll of having to bear your soul nightly on stage can make it even more of a grind than even the most monotonous job may appear to require.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet they persevered, and you would swear Klara and Johanna S\u00f6derberg are beyond this world by what they\u2019re able to achieve when they rise in song together.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than that, though, they not only survived but went on to recently release a sublime cover single of a Willie Nelson song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anything he writes is irresistible to fans and fellow musicians alike. On The Road Again filled a space in the narrative of his film The Honeysuckle Rose many years ago. It was a grammy winning song for him but First Aid Kit have recognised that the lyrics have a strange poignancy in these days when musicians cannot actually go out on the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their first recording since Ruins, two years ago, the sisters deliver a tuneful, pedal steel driven interpretation, and are donating the proceeds to the charity, Crew Nation, which provides help for backstage workers who find themselves in troubled circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meanwhile, there is a lady who really was seen to be savingcountrymusic, at least in a commercial sense when a string of pop-fuelled country hits at least raised country music\u00b4s profile when it most needed that. As if to remind us of that Shania Twain has been busy recording duets with performers from country music, such as Orville Peck, and the pop world on the ballad Legends Never Die, and with pop performers like Ronan Keating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shania has a Vegas season lined up, but to more fully consider the merits of that, look out for our upcoming feature on Paul McCartney and why he won\u00b4t be following her down that particular freeway, preferring as he does The Long And Winding Road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have loved the work, commercial soft rock as it was, of Shania and whilst I was always an admirer of The Beatles\u00b4 body of work, Paul McCartney, with and without wings, has also supplied a huge part of the soundtrack of my life. The other day, though, feeling a little overwhelmed by these strange times in Lanzarote when our airport and shipping harbours are standing virtually idle and when our islanders are worrying for their children\u00b4s future, and I couldn\u00b4t turn on the tv for fear of seeing all the ridiculous things happening in the UK as covid19 continues as such a threat, I turned instead to my You Tube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
First Aid Kit<\/strong>

<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I found one showing Emmylou Harris in tears of joy as he listened to a First Aid Kit that might not only be \u00b4savingcountrymusic\u00b4 but also might just contain music so beautiful it could heal the world. The duo is classified in the record shops and on the radio as being \u00b4Americana\u00b4 and we will be following Sidetracks & Detours pretty frequently over the rest of the year in search of more of the best music in the record stores !<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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