East Of Eden

We Say...

Review by Barry Walters

Imagine that you’re known mostly as the cameo girl on "that whistling song" aka Peter Bjorn and John’s hit "Young Folks." Your demure debut album, Open Field, from your post-Concretes solo project Taken By Trees comes and goes with little fanfare. What do you do to coddle the kitten in your weary heart?

Stockholm’s Victoria Bergsman answered that question by boarding a plane to record with the indigenous musicians of Pakistan — a politically unstable country rocked by fits of violence, one that even tour guides who specialize in remote travel now commonly avoid.

But for all its exoticism, East of Eden is never exhibitionistic: Bergsman rarely raises her voice. The songs seem to sing her — there’s a tangible sense that she’s being humbled. Amidst more picturesque local color than most globetrotters ever encounter, she contemplates the "Greyest Love of All." The album’s most outgoing track is an unlikely cover — a joyous, untethered rendition of Animal Collective’s recent "My Girls" that sneaks in distant yet lovely falsetto sighs from that band’s Noah "Panda Bear" Lennox.

The instrumentation isn’t entirely foreign: Joni Mitchell wouldn’t snub the deft guitar picking or subtle electronic shading supplied by her producer, Studio's Dan Lissvik. But the album’s key relationship lies between Bergsman’s Scandinavian-accented English and the violin, flutes and percussion of her Pakistani collaborators. Instead of a conventional drum kit, there’s tablas, tumba, dholak and handclaps that move the melodies gently along, letting them breathe where they would elsewhere be regimented. That physical sense of freedom plays against Bergsman’s reserve like a bow on a cello.