Garmarna
Förbundet

Swedish folk music rockers Garmarna come up with their new album Förbundet, The Union translated. It looks kind of dark and has a sound and story that go to the darker reaches as well. It is a style that has come from three decades of experimenting and three decades of experience, the debut EP was released all the way back in 1993. They have done many things since that debut, and they have a fairly uncommon style but I have heard, and even reviewed some, similar artists that do quite similar styled music.

It is rooted in the Swedish styled folk music but with some modern touches and a pretty fresh sound. The female vocalist is a pretty typical folk music singer, she is quite good at what she does. And the sound is pretty good as well, and the same can be said about the production that is really good. I find the variation to be pretty decent over the nine tracks that make out the story of this album, lyrics in Swedish so if you aren’t speaking that brilliant language you can always try the awful translating service by that awful search engine company to get an idea of what the songs are about.

I find this album to be quite alright, which is a good thing considering that I usually detest Swedish folk music, it sucks. But Garmarna sounds quite good for the most part and some songs are quite strong, but there are also those that I find to be quite a chore to listen through like Sven i Rosengård and Lussi Lilla that are pretty dreadful songs. Still, they should have a plus for doing something that breaks from the common and modern pop music, it is always fun with bands that makes their own thing and that is a plus even though the album isn’t that brilliant.

It could be worth checking out this one, especially for those of you enjoy what this band has done before. They could have a pretty wide appeal as they do their own thing and they do pretty good song, the most positive thing for me is that they make our terrible folk music sound more than acceptable, that is real skill.

HHHHHHH