release date: Mar. 16, 2018
format: digital
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,15]
producer: Sällskapet
label: BMG Music - nationality: Sweden
3rd studio album by the Swedish duo-project Sällskapet and its first without founding member Joachim Thåström, who left guitarist Pelle Ossler and multi-instrumentalist Niklas Hellberg in 2015. Here, the two have composed nine new songs with German guest vocalist Andrea Schroeder, who is credited as songwriter of eight songs - track #4 is an instrumental, and Thåström appears as guest musician on two compositions. Scroeder has previously released three solo albums - all with titles and lyrics in English, and she plays a major role on Engle og dæmoner (2012) by Danish band Farmen, and she appears on Thåström's Centralmassivet (2017) with backing vocals on one song.
Musically, it's related to Nowy Port from 2013, although, the soundscape has lost some of the experimental bits and instead focused more on scarse instrumentation and melody-structure, which may be referred to as 'ambient-industrial', and then of course it makes a considerable change having German as vocal side. Schroeder's singing voice actually fits the dark arrangements nicely. Her alto coloured tone echoes the sound of Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich without sharing obvious original qualities but it adds a certain 'pop noir' quality, but the music tends to stay much on the same track throughout most of all 43 minutes, which makes it a bit of a bland experience.
Not all bad, but mostly interesting without breaking musical boundaries.
