Maybe it is true that the Universe has a way of balancing things out. It never gives too much or too little to one place or a particular group of people. This leaves everyone having to scramble, needing to learn to negotiate and, occasionally, wanting to get the hell out of the place in which they were born.
Don’t listen to the U.S. billionaires promising that in three years’ time, their robots will do all the labour, and everyone will get a hundred grand per year to sit around and play video games. It’s the modern Scandinavian countries that have reached the highest point in human civilisation; they don’t like to brag about it, and they’ve done it because they weren’t out getting a tan.
It’s not just that the weather is miserable during the winter in places like Gothenburg. It’s not just that this contrasts with the perfectly aligned streets or the highbrow art events. Sweden and most of the Northern European countries are spooky, and so are most of the people who inhabit them.
It’s easier to get a Swede to confess to murder than for them to enter a conversation about how their day went. They’d rather empty their child’s savings account than let you get away with doing them a favour. Walking around the clean, perfectly aligned Swedish streets, you can’t help but think that something else must be going on and that you’re not invited.
It is that creepy vibe and the urban mythology surrounding Gothenburg and similarly Sunlight-challenged Nordic places that Fabian Brusk-Jahn mines for inspiration on the EP “In the Dungeons of Bäckabo.” And, yes, I know what you expect. But, no, thank the wise heavens above, this is not an exercise in Swedish death metal.
In fact, on the self-titled opening track, Brusk-Jahn’s whistling as he’s led to the gallows or to whatever other torture device that’s been planted underneath the Gothenburg streets and which has been known to turn the rivers red.
Actually, Brusk-Jahn has a very good, warm singing voice, and his songwriting relies on sophisticated jazz-influenced folk music. One gets the impression that Brusk-Jahn could’ve challenged pop-folk bands like The Lumineers for features in car commercials before Gothenburg got him.
“Nightwalk” sees the songwriter strolling through a land of endless darkness. He confesses that “everything seems darkness here,” that all of this emphasises inner fears and that he kind of likes it that way. No use taking a poll now to ask how Swedes feel about their nearly 24 hours of nighttime during the Winter months.
The same mood is maintained on the other acoustic guitar lead tracks. “Staging” sounds brittle and world-weary. “Skepp Ohoj”, with a chord progression that seems to start and stop like an unreliable car engine, talks about slipping into the void.
It’s then that you realise what this is really. “In the Dungeons of Bäckabo” is horror music, so don’t let the singer’s sweet voice or the sophistication of the arrangements fool you.
The final track, the instrumental “Gubbskrutt Trudilutt”, is a gorgeous sendoff meant to haunt your dreams in the same way that endless Gothenburg nights seem to have captured the imagination of Fabian Brusk-Jahn.
There’s an old saying in Northern Europe, “In Sweden, winter never ends.” Judging by this song collection, you can tell it’s most likely no exaggeration.
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