• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / Music / The Lion’s Roar • First Aid Kit

The Lion’s Roar • First Aid Kit

23 Jan 2012 / Comments Off / in Music/by Bryon Fear

The Lion’s Roar ★★★★★
First Aid Kit
42:46 min • Wichita Records Ltd • January 23, 2012
………………………………………………………………………………………….
Some of the most exciting music to surface in recent years has come from the folk scene. Seth Lakeman’s Mercury Prize nominated Kitty Jay, Patrick Wolf’s Wind in the Wires, Elizabeth & the Catapult’s Taller Children and last year’s sublime You & I from The Pierces, have all blazed a trail through a landscape marred with manufactured bands and talent show casualties. This week sees folk music once again Blitzkrieg the front lines of mediocrity as Swedish dyad, First Aid Kit, release their magnificent sophomore album The Lion’s Roar.

It opens with an ignis fatuus track that enchants from its opening bars, luring the listener to march through reeds of guitar, spurred on a wind of flute. It’s not by accident that Mats Udd’s promo for the title track is indefatigably dreamlike, the light shifting between dusk and night following the Söderberg sisters through mist shredded forests in a John Waterhouse vision which culminates upon inky black waters. It’s a vocally rich track in which their voices are closely bound in tightly woven harmonies, a defining characteristic of the album. Such is the charm of the track, that despite its full five minutes in length, it still feels too short and leaves the wayward listener willing to pursue it further.

As ‘The Lion’s Roar’ gently fades it does not prepare for its successor, ‘Emmylou’, as a slide guitar moves from a Pre-Raphaelite sphere to the dusty panoramas of Americana. It’s an almost incongruous transition that typifies the juxtapositions that define this album. ‘Emmylou’ is a perfect case in point; a track that bounces upon the suspension of a road trip melody driven down Route 66, underscored with a melancholy that only a slide guitar can betray, yet is punctuated with the lyrics:

Oh the bitter winds are coming in, 
and I’m already missing the summer…
Stockholm’s cold –
But I’ve been told, I was born to endure this kind of weather.

The music takes us one place whilst the lyrics take us to another and it creates a wonderful musical tension that is rarely heard, or works for that matter. But here it does. The result is a remarkable track which soars with an uplifting sort of melancholia that wouldn’t be out of place on the affecting Brokeback Mountain soundtrack.

The album is very much a bittersweet masterpiece, navigating complex emotions and themes that most adults can’t verbalise without the aid of a ‘shrink’ to tease it out of them. This is another surprising contradiction from two young woman whose combined age is not even 40. ‘In The Hearts Of Men’, which exemplifies this maturity, is punctuated with a musical phraseology and lilting lyrical cadence that invokes Morrissey’s later work. And there are other welcome influences here: there is a reverential nod to Beth Orton on ‘To A Poet’, which precedes a pinch of Appalachian Dolly on ‘I Found A Way’ and the heartrending ‘New Year’s Eve’ has Joni Mitchell all over it. These influences, which slalom between folk and country traditions, coupled with the production of Bright Eye’s Mike Mogis, tap into eras and places we have never experienced but which we feel a sense of nostalgia for … and the effect is quite powerful.

‘New Year’s Eve’ has a title and a melody that would make most discerning listeners assume that we have arrived at the final track, yet the Söderberg girls have one (maybe two) more tricks up their bell-sleeves with a closing track that hails from Calexico country. If we hadn’t yet comprehended the true nature of this album, the conflicting lyrics:

I’m nobody’s baby, I’m everybody’s girl,
I’m the Queen of Nothing, I’m the King of the World!

which ring out through a hand-clapped frenzy are a clarifying totem. Horns that epitomise the Spaghetti-westerns of Central American, hail the real end of the album, and it’s shocking (though by now shouldn’t be that surprising) how far the marsh lights have lead us from that first bewitching track. In Scandinavian lore it’s believed that the will-o’-the-wisp marks the place of a treasure. I can not think of a more apt analogy. Listening to The Lion’s Roar is like unearthing a lost treasure whose idiosyncrasies are its real worth. Each time I listen to this album I want to return to its beginning and start all over again. Which I do. Repeatedly.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
Tags: elizabeth and the catapult, first aid kit, folk scene, lion's roar, mike mogis, patrick wolf, söderberg

Related Posts

Did you like this entry?
Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.
Related Posts
Brumalia • Patrick Wolf
Extra material – interview with Patrick Wolf
Sundark And Riverlight • Patrick Wolf
In This Shirt • The Irrepressibles
The Lion’s Roar • First Aid Kit
Taller Children • Elizabeth & The Catapult
Patrick Wolf • One Night in Heaven
Patrick Wolf • The Bachelor
Polar Magazinei 2012 Retrospective. Part 3: Music 2012 Retrospective 3: Music

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies