You know when you’re walking through the desert and your brain is so dehydrated that when you look up to the horizon there are two beautiful Swedish sisters playing folk music? If this has happened to you, it was most likely a band called First Aid Kit.
This Swedish-folk-mirage appeared on stage at The Corner Hotel on a sticky, humid Wednesday evening in front of a sold out crowd of middle aged wives, Brunswick Street pilgrims and homosexual devotees. There they were, all Swedish like, you know, with the luscious long hair that went half way down their back and their dainty dresses. Oh, and Klara had bangs. Swoon.
With Johanna Soderberg on keyboard, Klara on guitar and an accompanying drummer, probably the luckiest damn drummer in pop music, they opened with “This Old Routine” and quickly followed up with their treatise on atheism, “Hard Believer”. If you want to connect with your liberal, left wing, university student demographic, writing a song about atheism is a pretty genius move and the crowd love it, with shoulders swaying and singalongs started in only the second song of the evening.
They introduce themselves with the cutest of American accents and are nothing if not polite Southern Belles, but Swedish ones. Did I mention they were Swedish? They reminisce about their last tour at The Toff, tell us how thankful they are to be able to spend time in Melbourne and let us know that they are thinking of moving here. You can only imagine the applause this garnered; it was almost too easy for them to win over the crowd. Introducing their latest album, The Lion’s Roar as if the crowd were ignorant of the Bright Eyes collaboration, Mike Mogis produced folk gem, they begin a suite of songs with “Blue”, exchanging any opportunity for the crowd to clap and cheer for intricate segues that see “In The Hearts Of Men”, “Heavy Storm”, “New Year’s Eve” and “Emmylou” woven together like a homespun indie-folk tapestry.
The latter, the first single of their latest album and an ode to the relationships of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash and June Carter is rapturously received as everyone in the crowd conveniently forgets how messed up and dysfunctional those relationships were to sing at the top of their lungs and look all doe eyed into the eyes of their partner. If not being a complete cynic, it’s a pretty cute song. But this was a gig that was defined not in the conventional and obligatory hammering out of the favourites from 2010’s The Big Black & The Blue and cuts from their latest album, it was made in those special little moments.
Asking for silence, the two magnificent women walked away from their microphones and towards the edge of the stage, with Klara plucking the opening notes of “Ghost Town” unplugged, their voices boomed to the back of the Richmond sweat cave and had the entire audience silent and mesmerised by the acoustic performance. The entire audience was silent except of course for that one obnoxious woman with the thick rimmed glasses standing about 5 metres away who thought it would be a perfect time to talk about her son’s daycare centre; homicidal fantasies and flashes of rage glinted in the eyes of those around her.
The girls may look like they could be snapped in half by a vicious wind, but their vocal chords definitely have some muscle, returning to their mics for an emphatically harmonized version of “To A Poet” that was played with all the gusto of your local band at the Texan county fair. Announcing to the crowd that they are going to play a cover of a Swedish song sung in English, one delighted punter exclaimed “Dancing Queen?!”
Alas, there would be no ABBA, but a left field, where-the-hell-did-that-come-from cover of Fever Ray’s “When I Grow Up”, folkified. It was nothing short of stunning, coming close to eclipsing the blissed out Queen of downbeat electronica, Karin Dreijer Andersson. Big call. Paying homage to the vocalist of the acclaimed Knife and co-founder of Rabid Records who gave the two girls their first release, Klara and Johanna are both humble and gracious in acknowledging their gratitude and debt, they seriously could not get more twee and kitsch if they tried.
Talking to the crowd about their CDs and t-shirts available for sale at the merchandise booth, Klara tells us that they will be there after the gig to sign anything or have a chat, “but you don’t even have to buy anything, you know, if you’re having a hard time at the moment and you just need some advice, come talk to us, that’s what we are here for, we are your First Aid-Kit.” It would be vomit-inducing if they weren’t so adorable.
They complete the set with a false-started “I Met Up With The King”, Klara laughs off her rhythmic fuck-up, blushing to the crowd and rewinding her crowd banter to start the song again, their lack of pretense is lovable and admirable and they seem genuinely shocked at the size of the enamored crowd in front of them. The fact that the gig had been moved from The Northcote Social Club to the larger Corner Hotel speaks volumes of their increasing popularity. Finishing with the title track of their latest album was a predictable move but effective nonetheless, it is a sweeping, bluegrass anthem, reminiscent of Fleet Foxes, the band the girls covered on Youtube to gain them worldwide attention back in 2010 and probably their finest moment to date.
With the shortest encore wait in the history of The Corner Hotel, they were off stage for no more than 15 seconds, The Söderberg sisters return to play “Our Own Pretty Ways” from their Drunken Trees EP. It was one of those moments where three quarters of the crowd stood around awkwardly waiting for a song they knew whilst the fanboys squashed up against the railing at the front sung their hearts out.
Closing with “King Of The World”, unfortunately without a surprise appearance by Conor Oberst (in my dreams!), the girls rocked the fuck out with Johanna pushing her keyboard back and forth so hard her hair flung onto her face making her look like Cousin It from The Adams Family. They left the stage to rapturous applause, to go give some relationship advice at the merch booth. These girls could not be anymore perfect.
– Chris Lewis
