Having worked for almost two weeks with and around Karlheinz Stockhausen in Kuerten and Cologne at the very heart of contemporary art music I return home to Sweden to get right down to reviewing a new pop CD from a Swedish duo. This could probably only happen at Sonoloco, and I’m proud of that fact! I mean it for sure when I say I’m not interested in genre thinking. The overwhelming bulk of reviews at Sonoloco has to do with western art music, but this is simply a result of the influx of CDs, which has tended to contain 95% art music.

This CD is the first-time project by a very talented twosome – Josefine Marklund and Lars Björkman – from Nyköping, Sweden. As a duo, or as a musical project, perhaps, they call themselves Quiet Hollow.

The first thing that strikes me is that these guys are totally independent, playing music they enjoy and master, without as much as glancing at current trends or fashions. This is part of the reason that I decided to let this CD in at Sonoloco, because an important property of all music reviewed here is its artistic integrity, and this for certain is something that Josefine Marklund and Lars Björkman of Quiet Hollow show.

The transparent, shiny texture of the songs convey sexy, softly surging impulses, like a latter-day impressionism with an erotic fingertip sensuality which wins me over each time, time and again.
It is an almost perverse luxury to cast expectations and frameworks aside and submerge oneself in this timeless flow of sensual auditory caresses, entering through the ears and finding their way throughout the anatomy, tingling and glowing in fingertips and eyebrows, with a peculiar afterglow of bitter-sweet love, no doubt.
This musical experience is like sitting down after a hard day at the office with a generous amount of whiskey and simply letting go… to drift into amiable dreamscapes of honey-dew pleasures… but with a touch of a sense of loss, of… nostalgia, like you’re sensing these summery visions from a view-point on an abandoned porch through a misty dampness of a fall garden; wet leaves and apples on the ground… and haunting memories…

Josefine Marklund’s lyrics are often intelligent and sensitive, evidently flowing out of a creative charisma and a deep sense of context and punch lines, albeit with that almost causal restraint that is the final touch of verbal talent; the sugaring of the cake, leaving, for the most part, nothing over-worked or too clear. Her lingual lines flow and wind like serpentines or thin curtains in a summer’s breeze, and sometimes she borders on the bitter lyrical style of Dylan or Leonard Cohen, with laconic observations like “most sins can be forgiven, but some things you just can’t mend” from the title track; Serenity… and there are youthful recollections like this from a stay in a hostel somewhere along the line of the teens, from Denim: “Some drank whiskey, some drank beer, some just enjoyed the atmosphere” – and it takes intuition and guts to print lines like that, which so easily could be a give-away, but which fit this music and its associations perfectly, beautifully, and the keyword is recognition. I recognize and remember situations like this, and all of us, if we have lived, do. Josefine’s lyrics sometimes cut as precisely as a surgeon’s scalpel. I have to meet this lady face to face!
There are occasions when the young person’s (and the not so young person’s too!) bewilderment at his or her own desires shines like exclamation marks through the lyrics, like in Easy: “Been so long since I’ve felt the yearning for another person’s touch; for the first time you feel appealing; I think I think too much”. I just love that finishing line! It’s brilliant, and again… recognition!

Josefine’s voice conveys that lustful downward drift of cool detachment, which just barely disguises a naked soul full of youthful tender longings. I find in her voice a dissociated longing which goes right to my heart, stirring up ghosts from my own forlorn youth, so tormented by these notions of beauty and grandeur, just beyond the circumstances, just beyond the next paycheck or simply in the promising reflection in a young girl’s eye across the floor.
Maybe the detached intensity of Josefine's voice reminds me the most of Nico of The Velvet Underground.

Coupled with Lars Björkman’s sense of timing and beautiful musical choices Josefine Marklund’s lyrics and vocals reach a restrained energizing flow that also reminds me of atmospheres on celebrated albums by Fleetwood Mac or The Eurhythmics. This is indeed very surprising in a home studio band from a rural Swedish town of the early 21st century!
Lars Björkman has to receive some extra appraisal for his sensitive instrumental touch, which carries Josefine’s voice along in this shining, flowing continuity, in a beautiful force forward. Some of Björkman's melodies have that obvious, radiant hit character. If this CD gets some air play the success will be fast and swift!

There is a West Coast San Francisco feeling of waving long hair in the sun through these tracks; dreamy landscapes, hopeful vibrancies, a promise on the wind, an echo of love lost and found, a fragrance of Medieval village magic… and I think also of Fairport Convention and some tendencies of the hippie groupings of the British 1970’s, but not in a clear statement, but through brittle, delicate hints and musical glances.
Quiet Hollow’s music fills me with longing and upsurges of gut feelings, and I can hardly say anything more appreciative about music than this. I’m surprised!
Josefine and Lars render me this dissociated, hypnotic poetic gaze, this detached inward longing, Fleetwood Mac on a stage in the merciless sun of Dallas, Texas in 1978, waxed down cars and Dr. Peppers in the shade, the water of the pools dotting the city backyards.

A complaint could be that since the CD is just short of 42 minutes long, while the available space is 80 minutes, the duo might have inserted some additional tracks; especially since a few of the songs I’ve heard on demos, which have not been chosen for the final cut, are better even than many of the songs included. I’m thinking, for example, of a breathtaking song about an absent father from Berlin, which would have been an obvious inclusion, had I had any say. The wealth of material not used here, on the other hand, reveals that the duo has a lot more where this CD comes from, and I suspect the composing and writing keeps up full throttle, so it looks very promising for the future!

This CD is a surprising success, which should pave the way into the hall of pop fame internationally for Josefine Marklund and Lars Björkman of Quiet Hollow, if my notions have any significance at all.
Congratulations, fellows!