If the opening riff on ‘If You Speak to Her, Tell her Thanks for Me’ doesn’t immediately grab your every bit of attention, you probably aren’t a fan of acoustic a folk music. “Live from a dark room”, a marked departure from Prince of Sweden’s previous work, was recorded and filmed in a day at a friend’s living room with gaffer tape on the windows. As sombre, dark, and melancholic record, it’s got a strong Leonard Cohen influence on the vocals over a reverbed acoustic guitar that’s acutely impassioned.
A minimal record, it’s a smooth and serenading set of four songs slightly under twenty minutes in total that’s perfect for a gloomy day. Combining classic rock n roll with slow jam singer-songwriter ballads, his style is one that’s deeply intimate to the point where you feel like you’re intruding. Prince of Sweden’s guitar, like many a singer-songwriter, is his primary tool, weapon, and magic. Every ounce of emotion that he expresses invariably gets amplified or anchored in his riffs and strumming.
On ‘If You Speak to Her, Tell Her Thanks for Me’, his deep voice instantly has you intrigued. The way he nonchalantly sings the titular lines is so intentionally lackadaisical that reels you in by how calming and reassuring he’s able to be. The six minute long ballad is an opener that highlights each little bit of style that Prince of Sweden has, most notably the masterful fingerpicking of his signature acoustic.
The solo project of London based composer James Phippen might be singer-songwriter/folk in style, but its tone and style is far from what I’d categorise as easy listening. It’s deep, dark, and raw. You have to let yourself be a subject to Phippen’s compositions. If you’re a fan of the slower pieces of someone like Paolo Nutini, but far more restrained and melancholic, Phippen is an ideal choice to get into. Listening to Live from a Dark Room is an experience that needs to be committed, it’s not the kind of tune you want toplay in the background while thinking about or doing something else. So just let yourself be swooned by the Prince of Sweden for twenty minutes and walk out of it a different person.
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