I'm the type of couch bound, winter album listener, rendered optimistic with well orchestrated blues and country balladry. Tales of begotten woe, terminal sadness reconciled; these things buoy me like no other. Enter Amandine, a cross Atlantic Swedish four-piece import with enough sore eyed songs to fill a rain bucket who, after four years and one EP have finally come forth with an album on Fat Cat Records, This Is Where Our Hearts Collide easily one of the more worthy efforts in its categorical distinction this year.
The tender, blues soaked on This Is Where Our Hearts Collide has contemporary connections with artists like Sun Kil Moon and American Music Club. What makes this unique however is soft amicable type diversity in the song-writing, a type of bravado with nothing to prove. Amandine lacks hard, rough edges that other artists accentuate; in part, it is this fact that makes them difficult to categorize. A better comparison might be to the sad eyes of Nick Drake, or crossing genders with Beth Orton, and even they seem to stretch. Amandine is fundamentally unique, and experience in tender melancholy minus the self-indulgence.
Frozen independent balladry from the nether regions of Scandinavia - formed in the city of Galve for those familiar, harkening to the American Heart Land what Amandine's first full length album amounts to. There is nary a highlight song amid the 11 tracks per se, but there aren't any remarkable troughs either. It is an even effort one might expect from Memphis or Northern California. Whether by chance or by design, this is a rare, beautiful album and as blue as it might end up sounding, it makes me think of much better days. |