Susanne Sundfør: Music for People in Trouble – Sad songs to soothe anxious souls

There is something bewitching about the Scandi brand of sadness. Like high priestesses of pain, acts like Tove Lo, Robyn, Lykke Li and Susanne Sundfør preach a gospel of bitter blues that can take you from the dancefloor to the darkness of the bedroom with devastating effect. For this, her sixth album, Sundfør is reaching out to anxious souls to put them at ease in this turbulent time. Moving from the twanging pedal steel of the irresistible Reincarnation, where she sounds like a heart-scalded Françoise Hardy, to the colossal, surging hymn to loneliness, Undercover, Music For People in Trouble is a sweeping, seductive cinematic slice of sorrow.  It's not all brooding bombast, though: the pastoral folk of The Golden Age, with its bleeping Moog melody, gives it a touch of Wicker Man weirdness, a gloriously avant garde moment that leaks into the haunting finale of the John Grant duet Mountaineers, which soars to anthemic levels of beauty. This kind of sadness can truly be a blessing.

[ susannesundfor.com ]