The short story of the EP, Skisser, began when Sweden's Alice Boman took her private home sketches (skisser in Swedish) to a studio in Malmö. Quickly they found their way to the city's indie label, Adrian Recordings, who decided on the spot to release them as is, warts and all. Typically it's the voice that makes, or breaks, a song and that's why the sparse simplicity of Alice Boman's home-recordings sound perfect even when fettered with sibilance and the clunk of a four track recorder's buttons. That voice, honest and soft as a veil, floats over her open piano chords, pulling the listener up to her level, above the hiss of the tape and her recorder's limitations. This is a shout which comes straight from the uninhibited corner of her own home. An inflection as fragile as frost, but as intense as the winter that brings it.
Opening song, "Waiting", is, and should be, all you need to know about the promise of this aspiring songwriter, but graciously it isn't all you get. A beautiful melancholia comes out of the blue, blue light cast by “Skiss 8”, a song that is too good to not have a title worthy of it. The rhythm of “Skiss 2” lingers like the sun after you close your eyes, a blurry moon on your eyelid sky. And “Skiss 3” rouses an image of a pine-plank country church with a young woman singing at the piano, her back to the door unaware of any and all who may be listening.
The songs on Skisser are a pledge, a bright promise of things to come.
Read my interview with Alice here.
The Skisser EP is out today! > iTunes.
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