Off-piste travels and time spent in a variety of unappreciated and unloved gardens has filled Swedish folk musician Sara Parkman with an impetus to describe the personal nature of secret gardens; places where it is possible to reawaken the psyche after the difficulties of a busy existence and watch the emergence of life in all its hidden glory.
Sara’s voice has an elemental strength yet an emotional waver that denotes a life well-lived and speaks to anyone, regardless of their grasp of Swedish. The misty timeless drift of opener “Bära Mörker” contains a wild choir, bagpipes and a sense of the open earth, an expanse that is gradually revealed as the voices soar around you. It is an emotional and thoughtful introduction to Sara’s world; a world that encapsulates acoustic instrumentation, sweeps of strings and a sense of melancholy that perfectly suits a voice that touches the soul, and the emotional and moral support that comes from the choir really helps to lift the songs.
The delivery of the lyrics changes as the album progresses; the simple progression of “Paradise” is overwhelmed by a rambling angry tone, with words pouring out that subsides as the anger recedes. An electronic bluster is confusing and seems to rile Sara, whereas the delivery on “In Manus Tuas pater” is filled with childlike wonder, the acoustic backing offering a sense of calm but the scrape and creak of the instruments containing a sense of melancholy. These changes of emotion and sensation flow through the album, with Sara’s take on “The Song Of Solomon” particularly vivid, a poetic outburst that finds the listener following the shapes of the words and revelling in the joy Sara has in her delivery. She seems desperate to put across these observations, but the beauty in the unbridled flow is open to all until a wild repeated mantra threatens to overwhelm.The use of drones helps to place the pieces out of time, although there is something about “Salikons Rosor” that had me thinking of a Weimar cabaret at the end of the evening as those left place arms around shoulders and drink to better times ahead. The fizz of the fiddle on “Dickapolskan” has a very different feel, with the words shadowed by ominous swells of sound that, in tandem with the tricky percussion, create an epic momentum; while the campfire fiddle of “Tre Hjärtan” draws the action very close; an intimate excursion that warms the heart.
This album is very much an emotional journey and the final track “Ora Et Labora” finds Sara losing composure as tones rumble around her. It is a hair-raising conclusion in which the listener fully experiences the emotional power and range of Sara’s voice. It is a compelling piece that finds the power gradually ebbing as her voice drifts slowly out of reach.Aster, Atlas is quite a discovery and one which demands further exploration. It bears repeated listening, with more subtleties making themselves known and is thoroughly recommended.
-Mr Olivetti-
