It isn't easy to find a good band playing with a good singer who has a good voice and sings good songs with good lyrics (that's almost like a tongue twister!) but surprisingly, Kate Tucker & The Sons of Sweden is exactly one such band. Kate Tucker & The Sons of Sweden consists of Kate Tucker on vocals and guitars, Mark Isakson on guitars, BJ Myers on bass, Cameron Herrington on drums, and Nicolas Danielson on keys and programming. Put them all together and you have a marvelous self-titled album full of emotional and heartfelt songs that are wonderful to listen to.
There are several things I like about the album and one of them is Kate Tucker's voice. She has a lovely, sweet Sarah McLachlan-esque voice that is melancholy and soothing all at once. When you listen to her sing the songs on this album, you can hear the vulnerability and emotion in her voice, and yet there's also a calm and wise quality to her voice that makes it sound world-weary even while she sounds young and innocent.
The other thing I really enjoyed is the band's music. How do I even describe it? The guitars and keyboard melodies were musically haunting, the blend and arrangement of the instruments together made for very unique and individualistic songs, especially in the tracks "Faster than Cars Drive", "Maybe a Pirate Stole Her Soul" and "Everything Went Down".
What I admire the most about this album, though, are the beautiful and poignant lyrics. Kate Tucker writes the most poetic and abstract lyrics which manage to make sense still and speak straight to the heart. My favorite lines are from "The Hours": Tell the hours it's fine I don't mind/You can fill up my time with lies/Can't believe how I've come to love them, and from "Maybe a Pirate Stole Her Soul": All the letters you sent full of words that were meant/To remind me of places that I've never been/In your tower of song and fortress of dreams/There are pictures of places that I've never seen.
Having said that, it did take me a while to get used to some of the songs on the album. While all the songs are haunting and melancholy but pleasant to listen to, some of them are especially eerie, particularly "The Way You Went" and "The First Day of the Year". I don't dislike these tracks, but I'm still not sure I absolutely like them either. Maybe they'll grow on me when I listen to the album a couple more times, as I'm sure I will be listening to the album a lot.
Article comments