First Aid Kit - Drunken Trees Album Review

Review of First Aid Kit's album 'Drunken Trees released through Wichita.

Wichita's latest signing, First Aid Kit, consists of two teenage Swedish sisters, Johanna and Klara Söderberg. You Tube footage shows a pair of unassuming, unsmiling and earnest young girls with yearning voices and wandering doe eyes. If the camera loves them, the camera will go home broken-hearted because they only make eye-contact with the middle-distance.

Drunken Trees is a short collection of the duo's simple folk songs. Dealing largely with human relations and the frustrations that result from them, First Aid Kit sing a good fight.

'You cooked his dinners and you raised his children and still, he's not satisfied / He says 'I'd rather switch with you, you don't know how hard it is, to work from 9 to 5.'

There is strain of naïve feminism running through the songs; it's observational, rather than outspoken and conveyed via the medium of heartbreaking harmonies. The sisters' voices synthesise beautifully and they seem to sing with their whole bodies - forcing every inch of emotion out past their vocal cords. Taking their cues from the likes of Bright Eyes and Scout Niblett, this is the kind of band that will get a fair few people hot under the collar and eager to part with their cash. Anyone currently excited by the recent slew of left-of-centre indie folk may want to check out First Aid Kit's utterly charming tribute to Fleet Foxes on You Tube.

Hayley Avron