release date: Jan. 17, 2025
format: digital (10 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,66]
producer: Joakim Berg, Martin Sköld
label: Universal - nationality: Sweden
Track highlights: 1. "Kom tilbaks" - 2. "Nära dig" (4 / 5) - 3. "Orkanen" - 4. "Hit men inte längre" - 6. "Lämnar alla bakom" - 8. "Kalifornien" - 9. "Sjunde himlen" - 10. "Små mirakel"
[ Promo-video ]
8th studio album by Anna Ternheim following her 2019 album A Space for Lost Time offers something quite different from what she has so far released as a solo artist. Former Kent-frontman Joakim Berg is here credited as composer of all tracks, and former Kent-bassist and producer Martin Sköld is also credited as co-composer on half of these ten new songs. Berg and Ternheim are together 2/3 of the project-band Dead People who gave us the debut We Love in 2022, an album which reflects a style that blends folk pop and synthpop, and that's basically also what greets us on this new album from Ternheim. In that sense it marks a huge leap from her 2019 stripped-down folk release. Berg previously worked with Veronica Maggio on her Fiender är tråkigt (Oct. 2019) for which he co-composed 9 songs, and it's tempting to point to that album when listening to Psalmer från sjunde himlen. The vocalist has been exchanged but Berg's fingerprints are all over this album, and he really has a gift for writing melodic pop-tunes. To finish off the tempting comparison with Maggio's solo release, that one is held in more uptempo synthpop arrangements, which in many ways fits her vocal better, whereas Ternheim appears more of a vocalist, which succeeds in the blue notes. That said, this album is remarkably uptempo when comparing to Ternheim's discography, and it's her first to be exclusively with Swedish lyrics.
All in all, the album is a refreshing new move on Ternheim's musical path. At times, I sense references to the Kent back-catalogue, and some songs reek a certain simplistic naivity but then again, these are explicitly 'psalms from the seventh heaven', and shouldn't shock anyone as primarily positive melodies, and then it's mostly just honey for ears and mind, and at bottom line this whole album is like a blow of fresh air. And don't we all need that. Psalmer från sjunde himlen is up there among Ternheim's best albums, and it's a recommended listen.
[ Aftonbladet.se 4 / 5 stars ]
