Music
First Aid Kit, Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Graeme Thomson
FOUR STARS
As everyone from Leonard Cohen to Richard Thompson knows, you need a keen sense of humour to make a living playing sad songs. For this rammed Edinburgh gig, Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg duly served up their exquisite melancholy with a generous side order of gags and giggles. The stage set featured a backdrop of mini-pyramids, suggesting they'd taken their Spinal Tap references and run with them. They passed around a bottle of Irn-Bru, vamped a knockabout rendition of the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army, and gently ragged on Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon - "a sweet little guy" - before a haunting cover of America.
The joshing was a side show to the main event, which was the way Klara's astonishingly pure lead voice dovetailed with the pitch-perfect harmonies of Johanna (the latter, crucially, also delivered extensive hair-swinging from behind her keyboard). Expanding their line-up to a four-piece through the unfussy addition of drums, pedal steel, and occasional mandolin and electric guitar, the set focused primarily on latest album, Stay Gold, and its predecessor The Lion's Roar.
The likes of Master Pretender, Heaven Knows and Wolf had a whipcrack energy absent from the records, but it was the tearjerkers that hit hardest. Ghost Town, delivered unamplified from the fringe of the stage, was spine-tingling. Shattered & Hollow, reminiscent of a clinically depressed Ronettes, oozed slow, sad magic. At other times the modish blend of American folk and country influences felt more rudimentary, but even these moments were elevated by the fact that the Söderbergs possess pipes capable of turning mediocre songs into good ones, and great songs into, well, gold.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.Â
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.Â
That is invaluable.Â
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article