Maybe it’s the Finnish blood running in my and Anna’s veins that we have in common, but I’ve really taken a shine to this humble indie pop artist. Or maybe it’s just that she is yet another one of the damn finest and most underappreciated songwriters in Sweden. We are spoiled with talented and consistently qualitative pop and rock artists in Sweden, many of them receiving attention internationally as well. Yet sometimes you can’t help feel a little discontent knowing the fact that it doesn’t matter how brilliant the songwriting and how sweetly celestial the melodies may be when you’re singing in Swedish. The audience is immediately more or less limited to those who understand Swedish and thusly is rarely heard abroad. Allow me to break this habit and introduce you to Anna Järvinen. She’s always a little breezy, lush and jazzy in her arrangements, with a little help from Dungen on her last two albums, but the melodies and sentiments are always crystal clear while still not sounding anything near obvious or phoned in.
Svensktalande Bättre Folk (Swedish-speaking Better People) from her debut 2007 album Jag Fick Feeling (I Got Feeling) is an excellent example of these qualities in Anna’s music. The melody and Anna’s signature voice are gossamer, like cotton candy wrapped around the nostalgic lyrics in a warm folkpop setting. Despite that 75% of my blood coming from the land of the thousand lakes I don’t even know a single word of Finnish. It’s when I hear this song that this fact saddens me most.
Listen to Svensktalande Bättre Folk on Spotify!
Or watch the youtube video below!
Oh, and listen to a live recording from her recent gig at Fasching in Stockholm that I unfortunately couldn’t attend.
