Outside of high school curricula and motivational posters, Robert Frost is not an especially popular literary influences these days. Two roads diverged in the woods and most people could give a shit. When sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg named both a song and their third album together as First Aid Kit after Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, from his Pulitzer-winning 1923 collection New Hampshire, the choice seemed to reflect their youth: The sisters signed their first record contract in 2008 when Johanna was 17 and Klara 14, both around the age when most readers have Frost thrust upon them. On the other hand, the Söderbergs are Swedish, not American. And instead of stopping by woods on a snowy evening, they’ve chosen Frost’s elegy to the natural state of entropy. “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold,” he writes. “So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”
It’s a darker and more fatalistic sentiment than we typically expect from Frost, a sunny reminder than nothing continues in its ideal state. Everything fades. We all die. First Aid Kit understand this inevitability, yet they have the tenacity and optimism to fight against that falling apart. “What if our hard work ends in despair?” the sisters ask on “Stay Gold”, as a guitar plucks out a stoic theme and the percussion echoes against canyon walls. “What if the road won’t take me there?” They’re not jaded—at least not yet. The Söderbergs remain romantics in an unromantic world, not only writing lyrics about fighting the good fight but making the kind of wide-eyed, ‘70s-tinged folk-rock that thrives on soaring vocals, warm harmonies, big choruses, and heart-on-sleeve lyrics.
There’s plenty of each on Stay Gold, their first record for Columbia. It’s certainly their grandest and arguably their most consistent release to date, even if there’s nothing here as undeniable as “Emmylou”, from 2012’s The Lion’s Roar. With its affectionate hook, that song was both a paean to country music romance and a mission statement; ostensibly the lyrics were directed toward a male counterpart, but it sounded more like the sisters were inviting each other to sing along. Stay Gold similarly conveys the joys of musical collaboration—their voices always sound good together—yet they’re not quite so convinced of the merits of the music industry. These are weary songs about transience: touring constantly, missing home, losing friends and lovers. It’s darker than Roar, but also wiser, more mature in its conflicts. First Aid Kit still can’t sell a line like, “Shit gets fucked up and people just disappear,” but they convey the dusty self-assertion of “The Bell” like it’s gospel.
“I’d rather be moving than static,” they sing together on a song called “Shattered and Hollow”, before promising each other, “We are gonna get out of here.” Touring life is a tricky theme for any artist to address, as it potentially alienates an audience that has never hired a booking agent, never had to worry about label contracts, and never had to deal with prying journalists. What’s bracing about Stay Gold, then, is how universal the Söderberg sisters make that life sound. Rather than dwell on the particulars of long days on the road, they pare their experiences down to sentiments that sound more relatable and identifiable, whether it’s leaving home, discovering new places, or defining your own destiny before the gold fades. In a sense, First Aid Kit have managed to establish a touring diary as a metaphor for young womanhood, which makes the music more powerful. “Girls they just want to have fun,” they sing on “Waitress Song”, “and the rest of us hardly know who we are.” The song gallops at a dramatic pace, with that insistent acoustic guitar and ornate filigrees of pedal steel instilling the chorus with a sense of immense yearning.
To record Stay Gold, the Söderberg sisters again flew to Omaha to work with Mike Mogis, who produced The Lion’s Roar. Naturally, the folk-rock reference points remain, even if the duo paint with a broader palette. There’s more color here, like the sympathetic flute on “Fleeting One” and the hoedown momentum of “Heaven Knows”. Mogis’ production sounds shinier, however, more elaborate and dense, with a vague shimmer pervading every note. While it broadcasts a kind of coming-of-age melodrama, this fuller, more self-consciously produced sound undercuts the immediacy of the sisters’ songwriting, such that songs like "Cedar Lane" and "The Bell" seem to be less about working through thorny issues and more about recalling confusions tucked away safely in the past. The music threatens to rob them of their youth, but these two women have the poise and presence to sing like they're still in the yellow woods pondering which path they should take.
