When it comes to music there’s a seemingly endless stream of songs for us each to love, a measurably smaller flow of entire albums to cherish, and an even narrower trickle of artists to treasure whole-heartedly.
For me, one of the few musicians I treasure whole-heartedly is Nina Persson, whether she’s fronting her famous band, The Cardigans or her almost famous band, A Camp.
Its been three years since Ms. Persson has shipped out any material album-sized in scale, so I look forward to February 3rd when I can order via Amazon the Europen import version of A Camp’s sophomore album Colonia. No way a Treasurer worth his salt could wait almost three additional months to nab a copy stateside, where the disc won’t be released until April 28.
The band’s website states that Colonia draws from a variety of historical inspirations including, “The opium den to the Belgian Congo, from the Namibian desert by starlight to Victorian New York by gaslight.” Later they tease that Colonia wears an air of, “Electricity, wig powder, and laudanum.” Hot damn!
The reasons to treasure the works of Nina Persson’s bands reach beyond their masterful melodies for which Swedish pop acts are now expected to provide. There’s a flinty force of narrative and protaganism Nina brings to her every song, all of them tingling with the sting of despair, and the buzz of something un-bruise-able and hopeful. Her albums routinely choke me up, sometimes from joy and sometimes from sadness, and sometimes for reasons less clear but all the sharper.
I’m counting down the days…
