Instead of a traditional top-10 list for the end of the year, Split Tooth Media is releasing a series of essays about the music that we felt mattered most in 2018. Read why here and read other installments here.
All albums tell stories. It’s part of what has kept vinyl alive in a digital age of cherry-picking tracks. Concept albums like The Wall and To Pimp a Butterfly tell these stories more bluntly than others. That isn’t a knock — those LPs are a testament to songwriting as a medium for expression more fully capable than it’s given credit for.
But there’s an understated middle ground that lies between the traditional concept album and the formulaic pop record. There are albums that sing a theme, whose tracks don’t share common characters but common ideas, and on which you might find a handful of songs which can stand alone, but which are vastly stronger in their context.
Ruins is one such album. Folk outfit First Aid Kit’s fourth full-length record, the January 2018 release thrives as a whole — showcasing the talent, emotional expressiveness and growth of Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg.
The duo emerged virally in 2008, after a video of the sisters singing a Fleet Foxes song in the woods blew up. Their first record, 2010’s The Big Black and the Blue, was an effort to find footing in a folk renaissance. The pair’s next two releases — The Lion’s Roar (2012) and Stay Gold (2014) — found more commercial success and showcased a huge leap in talent and composure.
Ruins is a complex next step for the band. Although, at its face, it doesn’t seem to demonstrate much new in terms of musicianship, the album is layered in a way that their previous three weren’t. “Distant Star” and “Nothing Has To Be True” are sweeping tracks with previously unheard musical intricacy. Singles “Postcard” and “It’s a Shame” are reminiscent of the catchy hits from the prior two albums but aren’t any less pleasant for the repetition, and represent a refining of the formula.
The album excels in a full listen. That cohesion, from opener “Rebel Heart” down to the final notes of “Nothing Has to be True,” is new for First Aid Kit. The songwriting stems from Klara’s break-up, and that comes through as the emotional crux.
“It’s the ruins of a relationship,” Klara said of the album. “How sad it is, but also how beautiful it was. That’s all you have left at the end.”
“Rebel Heart” is a foreboding opener. It sets the tone of the album without dragging down its start. It’s a darker take on the pair’s usual tenor. The next three tracks — the three singles released in late 2017 — are more standard fare for the group, albeit with a heavier hint of longing sadness in the mix of “Fireworks.”
At that point in the album, you’ve really gotten your bang for your buck in terms of traditional First Aid Kit. The sisters have made a living off the old-school harmonies on catchy tracks like “It’s A Shame” — country pipes are their sound, and they do them really fucking well.
But the next few songs form an interesting bridge. “To Live A Life” and “My Wild Sweet Love” are bittersweet love songs with a lyrical depth missing from earlier works. On Lion’s Roar and Stay Gold it sounded like the gals were writing about heartbreak from what they had seen in movies and heard on Emmylou Harris records. On Ruins, it sounds like they’ve experienced it themselves.
“Lie awake in the night thinking this can’t be right / But there is no other way to live a life alone / I’m alone now,” sings Klara, each word dropped like she can barely get it out.
The album’s title track is a sad, meandering tune like many things they’ve written before. The blunt lyrics are as on-the-nose as the album gets. Standing alone, that doesn’t play as well. But in the midst of the record, it’s a centerpiece and turning point. Klara comes to grips with her feelings and puts them into words. “I’m sorry, I am / But I don’t take it back,” she sings.
Then comes “Hem Of Her Dress,” perhaps the strongest offering on Ruins. The song is the album’s emotional peak. The lyrics here are the Söderbergs’ writing at its best: thoughtful and emotionally cutting. “I learned some things never heal with time / And I’ve been waitin’ here / Feels like a million years / And I’m a photograph that you forgot you took.” The song is sad in concept, but in practice it’s carefree. It’s a little misery, a little rage and a lot of fuck-it-all, climaxing in a drunken trombone sing-along. It’s a culmination of everything the album — and the band — wants you to feel.
The final number on Ruins, “Nothing Has To Be True,” feels like the morning after the wild night on “Hem of Her Dress.” Reality has set in as Klara figures out how to move forward and tries not to look back. “You get lost countin’ the years / Since you last felt like you were home” the sisters echo to each other as the album fades, before Klara delivers the closing lines: “Oh, I thought you were home.” The line cuts deep for anyone who knows what it’s like for the familiar to become foreign in romantic loss, and resonates particularly well from a couple of women who’ve gone from unknown teenagers to world-touring musicians in a decade.
That moment ties Ruins together with the many other chills found throughout. The landmark that First Aid Kit reaches here isn’t in individual numbers — it’s in figuring out how to tell the whole story, line by line.
Follow Cooper and Split Tooth Media on Twitter
(Split Tooth may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
