Steget Forandrar Allting. A voice and a piano, that is all. Well mostly. There are the occasional stringed things and some washes of synth but the majority this is stark, black and white, amazingly lovely stuff. First song is in English, yay English. I reactivated my facebook account, yes, I am opening myself to charges of racism from faceless MIT researchers, but I don't mind, my racism having already been confirmed many times by my taste in music. I have spent part of the afternoon looking up elementary and junior high school classmates and I am confounded at how many of them have the same list of friends and how they revolve a core set in elementary school and by geography. As comparison I had two friends who didn't know each other and who I barely know these days. I deleted both of them. I now have zero. They were probably racist anyhow. It is that sort of scholarship that is funded by your tax dollars. In this time of economic decline grants for research at major universities are at record levels. The money is being well spent. I once worked in the university Chemistry office and I would help prepare grant proposals, basically my assistance consisting of my typing or copying or whatever and back then if you wanted to get funded you had to insinuate that whatever you were researching was some how cogent in the fight against Aids. So if your area of inquiry was volcanic aerosols you threw in some nonsense about compromised immune systems or the like and you crossed fingers and counted on bureaucratic incompetence because the idea that these things are allocated based on merit is obviously a silly conceit. I suppose now there are studies on the racist tendencies of social network user proposals sprinkled liberally with allusions to climate change and how water shortages in the middle east caused by climate change models are leading to flame wars on Myspace. First song is over, it is the only one in English. I don't speak Swedish. It is alright for this is an affecting album no matter which language you are able to comprehend. Of course I will now lazily invoke Frida Hyvonen because she does sound a bit like Frida Hyvonen but as the lyrics are in Swedish I can't tell if the words are as silly. Now, I do love Frida but her lyrics are, if we mean to be charitable, charmingly esoteric and vigorously teenage, the mundane made dramatic if not quite an umbrella and a sewing machine on the dissection table. There are hints of brushed percussion and now some spooky cello bubbling underneath. It is a romantic record this. Oh, just now the drums are less subtle, a gentle rumble brought to a climax and her voice sailing over above, it's all wonderfully lovely! Call the adverb police. The joy of not understanding the lyrics is in the lack of being disappointed by the triteness of the sentiments on hand. Instead I can imagine these songs as the pinnacle of western civilization's potential in conversation on human interaction. Third song, a bit more persistent, racing chords and her at the top of her register, beautiful climax arrives somewhat earlier with some male vocals added to the richness. This is an incredible record. Interesting to see which of my elementary school friends turned into republicans and which into devotees of christian rock and which have essentially morphed into their parents. A good number. One of my best friends is now a politician and seemingly a successful one at that. Surprising as once his nickname was "shellac" owing to an incident when he was locked in a supply closet and came out claiming poisoning from the solvents in the room, including the formerly innocuous shellac. Third song over. Awesome. Next track is slowed down, a bit of Air Supply riffing on the piano, her stark voice, smokier and relaxed. I found the facebook page for an overachieving neighbour that ended up at harvard law and apparently now works as legal counsel for NBC Universal. Theirs was an odd family, the two girls were gawky and awkward for a fair portion of the 80s and suddenly one summer they both bloomed into supermodels but somehow the kids in the neighbourhood could never come to grips with their transformation and combined with the fact that they were obviously more intelligent than the rest of us, well it was intimidation all around. She's probably not a republican. There were non-republicans along the freeway the other day when I was driving to work. Over the freeway they unfurled a banner that pleaded for us to 'Free Palestine". I couldn't be certain but they had the look of facebook users, ie Caucasians! So this must have been a clever ruse to masquerade their obvious racist character. But then it may have been the idyllic romanticism of the life of a dissident that tugged at them. It is romantic to imagine yourself as a dissident in your own land, how better to have your arents fund a semester abroad in Tallinn? But the problem is that all of these people are fighting battles that have already been won. The MIT researcher claiming all of the white users of facebook are racist is fighting a non-existent battle, the kids unfurling their banners are fighting a non-existent battle. Popular culture has accepted the equivalence between Israelis and Nazis without much resistance and there exist strange classes where white kids of privilege admit they are racists and work on the struggle of living with such flaws inherited from their oppressor parents. What has this to do with Steget? Nothing, and actually I do diminish the gloriousness of this record with my incoherent ramblings. The current song, number five, is the pop number, the piano, handclaps, tambourines and squiggly synths, it sounds french, Kom Igen being easily misinterpreted by a non-native as 'combien'. Now to song six, male singer arrives, still in Swedish, his tones are pleasingly generic. It is a duet. He's ellicited a deeper well of emotion in her case, it is particularly dreamy, the piano muted, gorgeous and now the piano feels as if it has been moved to a grand coliseum and the echos range freely across the plain and wash gently over everyone that listens closely. Tender stirrings. It moves even in its alienness. I will end my racist association soon, I will return to my farming, and to peeling back the skin under fingernails to see bones. When you peel back the skin of some people you see the hidden flower underneath, in some you see just the skeleton, the already decaying bones, the osteoclasts with miners helmets and pickaxes, the hollowed out decadent ways. If you were to peel the skin of the average attendee of the "New School" you would find nothing. I watched "Gigantic" the other day. With Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel playing the leads. Lets set aside the fact that Zooey Deschanel is in so many awful movies for when we discuss her lovely pop record separately and talk instead of Paul Dano. He's a disaster. He's Thom Yorke turned actor. The movie was ridiculous. John Goodman in his one guise created by the Coens. "Gale". He merely modifies the pitch up and down on demand apparently. Next to last track, delicate traipsing across the keyboard and her vocalising a bit more intense and loquacious. it sounds like quite the swedish tongue twister until the insistent chorus with the dramatic underpinnings of stylistic synthesizer. Beautiful. It is all so beautiful. I would love to see them live. Starkly lit, a chilled evening in February, the grey on grey sky architecture shading their tender aches in melancholy. Oh wait, there are still a few more songs. I will have to continue typing. I could discuss the impending financial doom soon to arrive from China where allegedly a third of all commercial real estate loans are duds. Did you read the article in the Economist about the gender disparity in China? In some rural backwaters the ratio is something approaching 230 boys to 1 girl. Nevermind the racists on Facebook what is going to happen to all of these young men with no familial prospects? Will they annex Myanmar for the lovelies? Will young Chinese girls be sold off as prizes in this new capitalistic hedonism? And all this with china growing very old before they grow even partly rich. It will be an interesting experience, these next 50 years. The US has an advantage because its fertility rate is approximately 50% higher than that in Europe and developed Asia. Have a child, it's your duty to create consumers. Far from the Wanting Seed, we are not Victor Crabbes barren and guilt-ridden but we are Paul Theroux in comparison, we are Flaubert spreading our seed all across the levant. Last song had a piano riff that reminded of Bruce Hornsby and now what is this? An acoustic guitar, sounds a bit Lori Carson even as the piano gently chimes in the offing. The title is deceivingly anglo-Jonatan. What does it translate to? It is as lovely as everything else. Now the stepped up strings, it is sure to build to something exquisite and dramatic and I can't wait, more strings join the fray, the acoustic guitar falls away gently to the bottom of the mix and the piano speaking louder in more substantial phrases and her voice swimming fiercely above. Stunning. Are they meant to be big stars? Will the hipsters in Shoreditch be found with their bound notebooks copying out clever turns from Steget? I hope so. Now to an elegant finish, sigh. Last track, more of the racing piano track, her voice more urgent, and some drums just the same as those that a real rock band might play. Hmmm...I am not for this conventionality really, I preferred the spartan intimacy myself but really this is still rather nice it is all so rather nice.