Skivrecension: Daniel Norgren captures the mundane, but to be glättig

this album is unremarkable at it's finest way something can be unremarkable. For it is not at all an easy expression to do. You have to work through the darkness, to reach an ease and genuine feeling of peace, open the windows, let in the spring air and birdsong, boil the coffee and let the scents of the inside and outside are mixed. Then, it can be easy.

The good thing with Daniel Norgrens new album is that it really is heard that he has cheated. This is no false approachability, no carelessness, and absolutely no glättighet, just good music made with a sure touch and good sense.

a resident in the country outside the town of Borås, is a completely separate voice in Swedish music life. At the side of the big companies, and without much help from the media, he has built a custom platform and gained a relatively large audience. He made his debut in 2007 and made seven albums and many hundreds of shows during their first eight years as an artist.

the Friend Pelle Nyhage takes care of the record company that only gives out Norgren. Administration and design is managed by his wife, Petra Wester Norgren. When they go on tour, booking the bus and the venues themselves. No middleman, hardly any marketing. Still, Norgren right out the Circus in Stockholm in less than a day.

success, Daniel Norgren has not only grown public, he has grown as an artist. He was young when he started, and heavily influenced by their role models in the american tradition. Then it is natural that one mimics, borrows and steals. Gradually he has found his very own tone within the framework of the traditionsmusiken. One still hears echoes of Bob Dylan and JJ Cale, but Norgren is wider and more private now. On the new album, it sounds suddenly a bit like the Rolling Stones, and sometimes he sings like James Brown.

”Wooh dang” is recorded with an older analogue recording equipment in a derelict house in the vicinity of the Norgrens home, in a former textile factory, apparently, where time stood still, everything was covered in dust, and where an old German piano already stood and waited.

turn a is precisely the commonplace, the generous musikaliteten and the dynamic interaction between Norgren and his fellow musicians, Anders Grahn Andreas Filipsson and Erik Berntsson. They are like a single organism when the rolls are started. Norgren has also maintained his habit to weave in sounds from the field recordings with the sounds of nature. It helps, of course, to the feeling of homemade and down to earth.

It is an almost perfect album in its simplicity. I'm not overly fond of the linear blues, but accept it in context. However, I believe that Daniel Norgren would have to think a bit more on their texts. For an artist that has the world – and perhaps particularly in the US – for their feet in the future, works that rhyme with ”walking” ”talking” in the two songs one after the other. I really like the naiviteten in the texts, but also the must be developed with a high level of ambition, and of the utmost seriousness – just as commonplace.

Best track: ”Let love run the game”

Read more music reviews by Po Tidholm, for example, that Triakel make the folk response to a mordpodd.