Neil Spencer 

First Aid Kit: The Big Black and Blue

The Swedish sisters who covered Fleet Foxes to stunning effect now enchant with their own songs, writes Neil Spencer
  
  


Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg found global fame last year via their YouTube cover of Fleet Foxes's "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song", matching the Foxes's vocal prowess with stunning sibling harmonies. This debut album showcases their own songs, styled somewhere between Kentucky folk and Everly Brothers pop, and borne along by acoustic guitar and autoharp. The sound is mournful but the sisters' teen sensibilities are bright and defiant on standouts like "Hard Believer". Elsewhere, say on "Winter is All Over You", they entwine backwoods imagery and romantic suffering as cannily as big American brothers like Midlake. More variation would help but there's irrepressible talent at work.

 

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