Christian Kjellvander
A Village: Natural Light
(Tapete Records)
I don’t know what Christian Kjellvander’s drink of choice is, but in my mind it’s dark, strong and he consumes it in wintery solitude. Once through “Shallow Sea” the opening track on his unmistakably brilliant record A Village: Natural Light and the beguiled listener is lost amid one man’s bleary world of a heart’s lost and found.
The Swedish songwriter’s work is a chilling reward for anyone whose taste leans toward the moody, anguished and baroque. Kjellvander broods, but, as the second song title tells us, “Dark Aint’ That Dark” suggesting that there is much more than he’s letting us in on. And he’s letting us in on a lot. His voice is velvety smooth and sensual on “Midsummer (Red Dance)” a soft but macabre, mid-tempo track that is sprinkled with bright guitar arpeggio and a few drawn out progressions. Listening to this track, it comes as no surprise the songwriter took up a temporary job in a Swedish village cemetery because he wanted to get as close to his subject matter as he could.
Often throughout the record, Kjellvander offers songs that are boldly reminiscent of contemporary American song crafters like Bonnie Prince Billy and Mark Lanegan, glowering souls who mine western motifs for their suggestions of stark isolation. Fitting too that Kjellvander’s career began some twenty years ago as a member of The Loosegoats, a Swedish alt-country band. When Kjellvander sings “Misanthrope River” he’s practically dripping with saddle sweat, his tones evoking the kind of life that badly needs the wide-open space. It’s about bad people in worse situations. As raw and eloquent as anyone recording today, lyrical content like “I know a place you can lick yourself clean”, captures deep pain and suffering, as though the heartbroken are reduced to mere ungulate animals. He tells us, “I really was a good child” in a constant refrain on the song of the same title, and it’s as though he’s trying to convince not only us but himself of this fact. The production on A Village: Natural Light is spare, and thankfully so. Rarely does Kjellvander employ vocal harmony. Instead, he pits his voice against the frost. Any adornment would cheat the full breadth of his performance, lyrics like these should be bellowed, man against the chills of his own thorny deeds.
I don’t know if A Village, his first record since 2013’s The Pitcher fits into a larger piece in Kjellvander’s imagination, or if this is an isolated moment. There is a broad conceptual feeling here, suggestive of so much more. Either way, his is an amazing record, evocative and smart, but above all, something that feels its way from beginning to end.
Purchase A Village: Natural Light here.
