The Great White Sea Eaglethe meeting of Cardigans-singer Nina Persson and James Yorkston once morest the background of the Swedish Second Hand Orchestrabut also disappointed due to the high expectations.
Of course, given the sometimes more, sometimes less glorious discographies of the participants, this is to be understood in absolute relative terms, because the chamber music indie pop and folk of The Great White Sea Eagle nothing: each of the 43 minutes is charming and enchanting. The team strolls nostalgically out of time, beyond all trends, with melodies that are immediately catchy, noncommittal and ephemeral, showing a meandering class, and comfortably tempered with accentuation, both vocally and instrumentally, carefully and richly balanced.
How well the Swedish orchestra harmonizes with Yorkston has been known for a long time The Wide, Wide River from 2021. Persson now fits perfectly into this structure, even if it feels like she “only” remains the deuteragonist towards the middle, when Yorkston trudges in an almost more exhilarated and solemn way, showing his jubilant nature with reserved exuberance The Heavy Lyric Police, the behavior at the piano a casual purposeful optimism strumming in an actually tragic world A Sweetness in You and the tender minimal gem A Forestful of Rogues takes over the main role, as later in the painterly cross-fades of the Spoken Word title track, which uses the ambient.
But Persson is part of that Sam and Jeanie McGregor (a dreamy, harmoniously swaying, deliberately blossoming opener, growing from the piano reduction to the nuanced strings, while remaining modest and reservedly lovable, the nuanced virtuosity of the Second Hand Orchestra shows in a subversive way) the style-defining introduction – and in the duets she always outshines Yorkston: whether in the singalong of the tenderly warming one An Upturned Crab or Keeping Up With the Grandchildren, Yeahthe exhilarated looseness of Peter Paulo Van Der Heyden, who doesn’t let himself go, who dangles into a bar atmosphere, as well as the good-humored, catchy optimism of Hold Out for Love on one side of the tempo spectrum or the Christmassy memory Marythe elegiac and somewhat too meaningfully rambling The Harmony or the subtly evocative drama of A Hollow Skeleton Lifts a Heavy Wing on the other.
Spread out in front of this benevolent starting point, the parties never follow tangible hooks, create an immanent feel-good zone, but too often the songs simply end without crowning the way with a corresponding climax, fizzle out in an almost unspectacular and also latently unsatisfying way The Great White Sea Eagle gives you the undeserved feeling of being too pleasingly laid out, touching only too vaguely and always succumbing to cultivated boredom in the engaging beautiful sound without really overwhelming scenes.
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