Music
Review: First Aid Kit, Swedish Indie-Folkers, Return With R.E.M.’s Guitarist
Our take on 'Ruins,' the fourth LP from the Scandinavian sisters
Like Brits did with U.S. punk, Swedes Klara and
Johanna Söderberg repurposed Davis Sisters-style country harmony on their 2012
breakthrough “Emmylou” into a bright new thing, laying into notes
like they were tunnel-boring through glaciers. Producing their fourth set,
folk-rock impressionist Tucker Martine (Neko Case, My Morning Jacket, Sufjan
Stevens, the Decemberists) helps shape a dreamy grandeur, with touches of pedal
steel and Peter Buck’s guitar atmospherics, while a damaged romance bleeds
across a widescreen America – it’s like a Sergio Leone film starring Lana Del
Rey, doubled. At times, the musical ornamentation feels too much. But when
those two voices combine, it all falls away.