Two beyond-charming young women accompanied by their drummer were the second openers of the night at the El Rey Theater on Thursday, and the contrast between their music and that of Wild Flag could not have been more obvious: Vocal harmonies galore, a folkfest dream of the 70s re-imagined by two Swedish girls who had never set a foot in America before 2011!
When they appeared on stage, bathed in a warm gold light, sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg on guitar and keyboard, seemed to come from another time with their long auburn hair, sparkling gypsy-folk dresses and cowboy boots. Their bright and strong voices interlocking with a real loveliness, were immediately noticeable, channeling Emmylou Harris’ (as a matter of fact one of their singles is entitled ‘Emmylou’), and some Fleet-Foxes-meet-ABBA vocal harmonies.
The two girls, at each side of the stage, were all-smile, showing a real pleasure playing, ferociously moving their long hair on ‘Blue’, a song between the Byrds and Gram Parson, foot-tapping on some of their other tunes like ‘King of the World’, an exhilarating clap-along song which features no less than The Felice Brothers and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst on the record! Actually the two sisters recorded their second album, 'The Lion’s Roar’ with Mike Mogis in Omaha last year, and even toured with Bright Eyes and other Swedish successful songstress Lykke Li.
Many of their songs had this instantaneous stickiness, as if they were already old classics you had always known, like the ‘This Old Routine’, ‘The Lion’s Roar’, and especially ‘Emmylou’, a country ‘Carter-Cash tribute song’ as they announced it, with a super-catchy-chorus singing the lines ‘I'll be your Emmylou, and I'll be your June/ If you'll be my Gram and my Johnny, too’.
Some people around me were singing along all the lyrics, and they obviously had come for the harmonies of First Aid Kit as they did not even stick around for Wild Flag!
They were a nice surprise, with sweet and endearing songs totally unexpected before the wild next act, providing an interesting contrast, the sweet girls before the mean girls, the flower girls before the swagger girls … but at the end it was all about girl power.
