Album: First Aid Kit, The Lion's Roar

Johanna and Klara Söderberg, the Swedish sisters who perform as First Aid Kit, are exponents of what might be called Scandamericana: this second album, recorded with Mike Mogis, is a country-rock revelation. Blessed with clear, characterful voices, employed in beautifully modulated, bell-like harmonies, the Söderbergs find beauty in the bleakness of mortality and the cyclical nature of things – "Everything gets tiresome, everything grows old/ With each secret revealed, there's another to be told". Their influences are upfront, in the Buffy Sainte-Marie stylings of "Wolf" as much as the search, in "Emmylou", for someone to be the Gram to their Emmylou. Mogis's arrangements, meanwhile, are beautifully judged, from the austere autoharp of "New Year's Eve" to the wistful, fluting mellotron that casts its shadow over several songs.

DOWNLOAD THIS The Lion's Roar; In The Hearts Of Men; To A Poet