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Expanse accountThe multifarious musical moments of
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“It’s very important to me that the music I write comes out true to what I have in my head,” says Erika Alexandersson, lynchpin of Swedish quintet Thus:Owls. “Sometimes I can’t really explain it, and I don’t even really know what it is.” Fortunately, Alexandersson benefits from a history in improvised music and a band of intuitively understanding fellow musicians, now including her new husband Simon Angell, guitarist of Patrick Watson Band (for the band’s four Canadian dates, PWB drummer Robbie Kuster fills in for Ola Hultgren, who’s in Brazil with Loney, Dear). Snagging time at the prestigious Svenska Grammofon Studion in Gothenburg, run by the Soundtrack of our Lives, sweetened the deal further with its extensive facilities and countless available instruments (“It opened up the possibilities,” she says). All told, the sounds in Alexandersson’s head have been successfully transposed to the quintet’s recent debut disc, Cardiac Malformation. It’s an evocative jumble of neo-classical, folk, cinematica, retro rock and avant-garde sound wrangling, one that constantly surprises. “The songs, the lyrics in the songs, are stories to me. Writing music, to me, is like having a diary. It’s memories and it’s moments and it’s pictures that have their own life—which is probably why they stick out from each other sometimes.” As varied as the album is, it does have a distinctly Scandinavian flavour, a fastidiousness to match its free spirit and an intimacy to match its expansive scale. “They respect silence a lot more than we do here in North America,” Angell observes, “using silence as part of the music, as opposed to trying to fill it up all the time. That was a big shock for me. That translates into life, not just music.” The cornerstone of Thus:Owls remains Alexandersson’s voice, a commanding yet flexible thing. “I come from free improv—trying to find all kinds of sounds with your voice, ugly ones and nice ones,” she says. “It took me a long time to find my voice too, because I always longed for some harshness—I like contrasts—so it feels like I’ve been growing into my voice. “I want to touch people, I want to crawl under their skin with my voice.” WITH MY PEOPLE SLEEPING AT DIVAN |
