The music that comes out of my speakers right now feels like a soundtrack to the cold, snow-covered landscape outside my window. This first real taste of winter makes an effort to penetrate the window to reach inside, but the tones from Winter Took His Life create a comfortable peace in the room.

Now the name “Winter Took His Life” may seem a little ominous to have as a soundtrack right now, but I feel really good. This naked music with beautiful melodies rather promises that the sky will clear up and the gray days will be followed by sunny, bright winter days. That’s how it feels.

Winter Took His Life is Susanna Brandin, a singer/songwriter that released her debut album last year, “You Know What It’s Like to Be Alone and Shut Down” (Bless the Press). Enjoy three tracks from the album:

Lucky Star
Oh
When You Said You Headed Home

Visit Winter Took His Life on Myspace. On Last.fm you can listen and also download more tracks.

If you’re in Göteborg on Thursday, the 27th, you can go to Kontiki and see Winter Took His Life play live.

A couple of years ago Henrik Åström released the album “Miracle” and he is now on his way to release his second album, aiming for the beginning of 2009. And it feels nice to be able to listen in on some tracks here below.

I would like to call Henrik’s music downscaled pop. Which is a quite stupid thing to say since nothing is downscaled from anything; it is what it is and maybe also what it should be. But something makes me want to differ Henrik from the singer/songwriter-genre that comes from another direction with Dylan and others in the background. Here I feel more pop in the melodies, even if I sense the folk influence in the verses sometimes.

And the way I hear it now, no upscaling is needed; the guitars and the piano is quite enough for these beautiful melodies and emphasize the closeness and the thoughtfulness. And the whistle-melody in “Oscar Wilde” is forever stuck in my mind…

Oscar Wilde
A Soldier and a Fool
The Heart

Visit Henrik Åström on Myspace

The Örnsköldsvik citizen and the singer/songwriter Lars Ekengren plays a number of instruments when he creates his beautiful Americana-inspired music. The acoustic guitar is used frequently as well as the piano, but I think his strongest instrument is his voice, that seems to be made for this music. Sligthly rough like from one of the finest sandpapers and a soul-bluesy softness and feeling that makes it sound great. It’s obvious that he’s influenced by American music, and one of the sources of this is of course him living there for more than five years:

“I heard a lot of good music when I lived in the USA (Detroit) and it has probably sculpted me and my music somewhat. A lot of not especially known (in Sweden), but yet really good artists like for example Jeffrey Foucault, Mark Erelli, Richard Buckner, Jeff Black, Peter Mulvey, Patti Griffin, Buddy/Julie Miller, Richard Shindell, John Gorka, Peter Bruntnell, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lori McKenna, Kathleen Edwards and others…”

“Then of course we have Springsteen, Dylan, John Hiatt, Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams, Counting Crows, Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, Emmylou Harris, Mellencamp, Jackson Browne and so on…”

About his songwriting he says:

“I have a love-hate relationship with the songwriting: 10% comes all by itself (a frase, a chord etc), the remaining 90% is pure discipline. If one should write songs only “when inspired”, nothing ever would be done. I think those that tell the contrary are lying. If that is the case, then I really lack inspiration.
The lyrics take time…” (translated from Swedish)

He claims that “I wouldn’t be able to play a barre chord even if my life was at stake”, so besides the ambition to play more concerts in the future and maybe form a band, a goal is to learn barre chords… :-)

Listen to and download three tracks from Lars Ekengren:

Distance
Hope & Faith
Hands

You will find more tracks to enjoy at Lars Ekengrens site, and you can also visit him on Myspace.

I’m sitting here listening to Petra Engdahl’s debut album and just enjoying. It’s soothing and beautiful and it’s made for just to be inside the music and let go of all thoughts. She uses few means to build the strong ambience in the songs. Mostly it’s about the piano and Petra’s voice, but the acoustic guitar is also used frequently, and often she colours with electric guitars, organ, strings and other sounds.

As an album it’s as varying as I like an album to be. You can’t tire of the music with these range of songs and yet she keeps it quite still with an atmosphere that runs through the entire album.

You can listen to and download three tracks below and of course you should visit Petras on Myspace to discover some more.

Closer to
Collectors (with Martin Nilsson)
Trail

The duo Newgate Fringes consists of Jesper Zakrisson and Johan Hansson and they celebrate 5 years as a band this winter. They have released three albums before and are just about to release their fourth, “Keeping the Score”. I recommend you to visit Newgate Fringes’ site, where you can download and listen to many tracks from their earlier records.

This is singer/songwriter music with a mellow touch, with tight beautiful vocal harmonies and nice guitar arrangements. In their latest album they produced an ambience that made me sometimes think of the early sixties with Everly Brothers and early Simon & Garfunkel, emphasized by the great percussion ideas in some tracks.

With the new songs they have moved on to larger arrangements with more instruments, but still with the same base and feeling in the songs. You can taste this by listening to two tracks here below. “In Her Shoes” is a track originally from the album “Collecting Your Points”, but this newer version is produced by David and Ludwig Franzén at Arrowstreet Recordings in Umeå. The Score is produced by the band.

In Her Shoes
The Score

Visit Newgate Fringes’ site and their Myspace page