First Aid Kit’s lush, plush new album “Stay Gold”.

First Aid Kit's Stay Gold.

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

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 Fox­esTiger 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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