What did the Swedes ever do for us?
Musically, a chequered past – Abba’s peerless pop canon cannot be overshadowed by the turgid Roxette or the crimes against music perpetrated by Max Martin, but happily, tonight’s lineup go some way to redress the balance.
James Yorkston has recently done great work in international relations, collaborating with (Jon) Thorne and (Suhail Yusuf) Khan on three excellent albums as well as bringing Ranjana Ghatak into the fold, and now he has cast his net north, to launch his second album with The Second Hand Orchestra – a collective of sorts, assembled by Karl-Jonas Winqvist (on drums tonight), and, as Yorkston explains, its members often playing instruments less familiar to them… their “second” choices.
Not that you would know from the virtuoso performances of tracks from the collaborative debut between Yorkston and his Scandinavian cohorts, ‘The Wide, Wide River’, and its follow-up, ‘The Great White Sea Eagle’ (not “Seagull”).
And, of course, for the second instalment, we have a proper Swedish music superstar, Nina Persson out of The Cardigans. They kick things off with just the pair onstage, Yorkston accompanying on piano, and the indie singer showing off a beautiful soulful voice, before the two duet on ‘A Sweetness In You’, the melding of their voices belying the fact that they’ve only worked together for a matter of months.
They’re then joined by the rest of the ‘orchestra’ – and while Ullis Gyllenberg is on violin and Lina Langendorf plays flute and sax, this is quite far-removed from classical music. Instead, it’s more a mix of post-folk and sea shanty, often on the same song. Peter Morén’s fine guitar work spans genres but is at least once redolent of the recently-departed Tom Verlaine – Morén is, for the uninitiated, one third of Peter Bjorn and John, another Swedish institution largely due to whistled hook of ‘Young Folks’; itself best known, to Yorkston at least, as the soundtrack to “the Homebase advert”.
There’s banter aplenty, not surprisingly mostly coming from Yorkston, who, introducing each member in turn, declares that he doesn’t have favourites in the band, but if he did it’d be… well, each member in turn – Per Bengtson being the one he’d most like to be trapped in a lift with, Persson for her hospitality while in her homeland, the singer having helpfully taught him that the Swedish for “thank you” is “muta fuka”.
With such entertaining asides the band inevitably run over time, squeezing in a buoyant version of ‘Struggle’, despite these “fatigued Swedes” having been on tour this past week. There’s more tales from the road, Yorkston describing how his bandmates swelled with patriotic pride on spotting a vintage Volvo outside the gig venue in St. Monans, while Yorkston confesses to a purchasing, according to his teenage daughter, a “mid-life crisis guitar”.
Tonight’s second-to-last song has a “ra da da” chorus that’s pure Eurovision, showing off the combo’s pop chops, though it’s probably more ‘Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley’ than ‘Waterloo’, before the lead single from the new album, ‘Hold Out For Love’ brings an exhilarating set to a close. As the band link arms and take a final curtain call, we thank the Swedes for everything.
Proceedings were opened by Canadian songwriter Julian Taylor, who takes the reverse route to the headliners – usually with his Julian Taylor Band, he’s in solo mode, which perhaps gives him the chance to show off his virtuoso fingerstyle guitar work. Musically there’s a hint of namesake James Taylor in his songwriting, or on occasion The Waterboys on his jiggier moments, and he shows an ear for a hook on ‘Ballad of a Young Troubadour’ – a track familiar to some of the crowd already, and quickly picked up by the rest as the audience are lured into singing along on its catchy chorus. Closer ‘Opening The Sky’ was, he relates, written about his near-fatal car crash of a few years ago, the song acting as a message to his daughter in case he didn’t make it. Happily for all concerned, he very much did.
(Images: Andrew McKenna)