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CD Feature/ Saralunden.Björkås.Mjös: "Dubious"

  Tobias

Sometimes, art is stronger than love. Sara Lunden and Kyrre Björkås were a couple for a short period of time, endless bus trip from Stockholm to Oslo and a lack of financial funds to pay for them putting an end to their hopeful relationship. Their musical liaison, however, has outlasted their physical one, resulting in the brooding menage a trois “Dubious”.

The more one reads about the story behind these five songs, the more it sounds like a beatnick novel. The first meeting between Lunden and Björkås took place by coincidence, with him assisting her as an inpromptu sound engineer at a performance at an art exhibition. Later, when they had written three songs in the confinements of Sara’s Stockholm studio but were unsure as to how to record them, rescue again came in the midst of night and by complete chance. In a bar in Oslo, the two met Andreas Mjös, who had very concrete ideas on the arrangements, inviting them to finalise the tunes in his own production space. Just two weeks later, “Dubious” was completed.

When listening to the music, however, no story in the world sounds improbable any more. It is so easy to get caught in its web of utterly romantic, tobacco-tinged, coarse-grained duets, its sensual bass lines and physical lyrics, sharing thoughts deemed too open for many diaries: “I lie naked in my bed/ I imagine you are there/ It’s a new feeling, newer than before/ I couldn’t help myself when I first saw you/ I couldn’t help myself this time/ I got this instant urge to make you mine”, Lunden and Björkås sing on “Naked in My Bed” and their immense intimacy seems so unashamed and unaware of the microphone’s presence that, as a listener, one doesn’t even feel like a voyeur.

With its brushed drums, atmospheric electronica, upright bass pluckings, unresolved harmonic cycles and close-miked voices, the EP feels like a bedroom Jazz performance at midnight, with only the bright yellow moon peaking in through the window as a solitary spectator. When Björkås reverts to spoken word, caressing the air around him with his deep vocal reverberations and Lunden answers him with cool, brittle melodies, it is almost like a flirt between two people who have never met but know they belong to each other.

There are no more than sixteen minutes of music on “Dubious”, but they feel as though it were an entire night. It is a slow dance, spinning you around softly and ever-so-slowly making you feel comfortably dizzy with the taste of whiskey on your lips. Art may have been stronger than the love in the long run, but love was certainly at the heart of these timelessly artful songs.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Nexsound Records