Review: Stay Gold by First Aid Kit

Words by: Anne Pryde

I don’t know how many of you have ever listened to Klara and Johanna Söderberg, the pair of sisters that form the two halves of the folk duo First Aid Kit, but before my review of their latest album to date, I’ll just leave it here: Their music comes off as someone who has traveled a lot, wandering around the world, and finally returns home to tell everything to their sons and daughters. In their voices there are the roughest cliffs and the highest waterfalls, and the widest wheat fields and the wildest winds of winter. To sum it all; they are the future of folk.

Technical Details:

Year: 2014

Genre: Indie folk, folk rock… folk!

Length: 38:25 minutes

Country: Sweden

Stay Gold is the third album by the duo First Aid Kit, who has expanded to record an album with orchestral elements and a deeper, greater sound. First Aid Kit’s music can easily be recognized by Klara’s guitars as well as the two voices of the sisters, which overlap with backing vocals. The girls, who are completely self-taught musicians, began playing more or less at the age of 10, and by the time they started their first gigs, they could only play on weekends because Klara, the youngest, was still at school. Johanna quit high school, and Klara didn’t even start. They released their first EP, Drunken Trees, in 2009, and their first studio album, The Big Black and the Blue, in 2010, with only two follow-ups after that. They are already established as one of the mainstays of the new folk panorama, especially in its most indie zone.

In Stay Gold, First Aid Kit has proven they can expand their musical feeling and make the listener listen again and again to discover a new layer of music not heard the previous time. There are even slight distinctions between the voices of the two sisters. I actually found that Johanna’s voice is deeper, and a bit lower, than Klara’s, and when they have voice solos, without the other’s backing voices, it’s easy to differentiate them. Also, their orchestral additions make for a perfect, harmonious sound.

Their first single, My Silver Lining, is a beauty that stands out as one of the best songs on the album, and its commercial success is not a surprise, seeing the wonderful melodies, the great beat -my god, what an incredible contretemps! - Or their voices –“I just keep on keeping on” is the most repeated line of the song, but it doesn’t become thus a boring one-, not to talk about their lyrics.

Stay Gold is a true masterpiece of the current folk music where we can see the sophisticated maturing process of the Söderberg sisters, both in lyrical terms. They stated that they had written the songs on the album with more presence of their life experience in them and in terms of sound, instruments and musicality. A great album in general and one of the best releases in the last two years.

Tracklist and featured songs

My Silver Lining, 3:35

Master Pretender, 3:47

Stay Gold, 4:11

Cedar Lane, 4:43

Shattered & Hollow, 4:04

The Bell, 3:28

Waitress Song, 4:04

Fleeting One, 3:14

Heaven Knows, 3:18

A Long Time Ago, 4:01

My Silver Lining, 3:35

One of the best songs on the album, not to say the best, the first single and the most known of them all, My Silver Lining is not unworthy of any of this. I cannot give more praise for this song here as I said it all in the review, but I wanted to feature it anyway.

Stay Gold, 4:11

Stay Gold is a beautiful song, with that pinch of (quoting NME) “sophisticated sadness”, and it is very representative of the whole atmosphere of the album’s music. It makes me think about those last August days, where everything is gold and the summer excitement decays into an autumn nostalgia. Do you know what I mean?

Shattered and Hollow, 4:04

What I especially liked about Shattered and Hollow was and is its lyrics. Its way of showing the bittersweet point of view of someone’s resolute, but sad, because of the loss of the one he/she loved, is poetic, wonderful, and melodic, which adds the perfect ambient it needed for the listener to understand the lyrics and this point of view I have talked about.

Fleeting One, 3:14

To me, Fleeting One talks about a woman who has not found her place in the world yet, a woman who is confused, but still tries to walk and see if she is able to find her path in her own before she… dies? Leaves to somewhere? I’m reading too much into it, maybe. The chorus describes to us her love situation, and then uses it as a metaphor for us to see all of her dawning. And still the song is neither sad nor slow, so… it really is beautiful somehow.

A Long Time Ago, 4:01

I wasn’t intending to feature this one, but I relate a lot with this sad, nostalgic tune, which makes for a perfect end of the album. Maybe I’m letting my personal life interfere too much with this review or the music I listen to, but I couldn’t help it. I believe A Long Time Ago, to be the story of two friends, one of whom fell in love with the other. The other believes himself/herself to be in love too, but he/she didn’t feel the same intense feelings as the other and it all has a sad ending. I’d highlight the wonderful strings on this heartbreaking song, and the ability of the Söderbergs to adapt their voices and music to amazingly fit the theme of the song and turn it into one worthy of belonging to a movie soundtrack.