First Aid Kit’s Stay Gold.
Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara’s third album as First Aid Kit is as warm and sunny as its title Stay Gold would suggest. But it’s the gold of the sunset. There’s that sense of subtle transformation as the bright certainties of youth become tinged by the possibility of future disappointment and disillusion.
As they did with their second album The Lion’s Roar, reviewed earlier here, they’ve travelled to Omaha to hook up once more with Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes who takes up production duties again. But there’s a bigger, more expansive sound to the album this time around.
The bench mark for the two sisters is still the plaintive harmonies of Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons. But like Parsons before them, they’ve moved on from the sounds of Nashville to embrace a wider, unashamedly American panorama. As with Sharon Van Etten (reviewed earlier here) we’re back with Fleetwood Mac. But again, on the best of the latter’s very best days.
Johanna and Klara Soderberg.
The boys from Pitchfork give Stay Gold an approving 7.3 here. You can get a taster with the video from the opening track from the album My Silver Lining here.
But best of all, if you want to understand, or at least eavesdrop on the sorts of harmonies produced by that sixth sense unique to siblings, then have a look at the acoustic version of Fleet Foxes’ Tiger Mountain Peasant Song that they recorded in a wood here. It’s from all the way back in 2008 when the pair were about, oh, I’d say around seven years old.
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