If you listened to BBC 6Music’s Now Playing 2012 Blog Preview just before the new year you’ll know that First Aid Kit were my tip for 2012. Now their sophomore album The Lion’s Roar has finally hit the shelves and if there’s any justice in the world it should help to propel First Aid Kit in the public consciousness. Considering the ages of Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Sodenberg (just 21 and 18) they have made an incredibly mature and assured LP and have expanded their sound by employing a full band, an option they didn’t use when making their debut The Big Black & The Blue.
From the opening bars of title track ‘The Lion’s Roar’ you just know that you’re in for something special. It’s a beautiful track with a haunting flute line running all the way through it alongside wonderfully rich melodies and harmonies. There surely can’t be many better ways to kick off a record and the transition between the fading flute in to the joyous slide guitar intro in to ‘Emmylou’ is genuinely a joy to listen to. ‘Emmylou’ itself is probably to most accessible track on the album, offering itself as a pretty straightforward slice of Americana folk. With its name checks to June Carter, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, and Emmylou Harris it also shows us some of the band’s musical heroes. ‘In The Hearts of Men’ is probably the slowest track on the album, using echoey vocals to create a sense that they’re kind of drifting through the song. ‘Blue’ could be a single with its great bass line and bells and ‘To A Poet’ is another lovely gentle song lamenting the loss of a lover; ‘I miss you more than I can take / And I will surely break … But there’s nothing else to it / I just get through it’. It’s possibly the most heartbreaking lyric on the album.
The great thing about this album is that there are no dud tracks and, unlike a lot of albums, the quality stays all the way through until the last song. ‘Wolf’ is a particular highlight towards the end of the album. It has an almost tribal feeling to it with rolling drums and chanting harmonies and it boasts one of the catchiest choruses on the album. If this is not released as a single then these girls have missed a trick! Final track ‘King of the World’ sees them bringing in Conor Oberst (him from Bright Eyes) to create a singalong anthem, complete with hand claps and horns and it’s a fantastic way to end the album.
As far as indie folk albums go this collection of songs is almost perfect and it’s certainly hard to see any of the established UK members of the ‘Nu-Folk’ scene bringing out anything this year to top The Lion’s Roar. This could well be the album that cements First Aid Kit’s place as the new darlings of folk.
