You don't have to take daily doses of Forkcast to notice the recent critical praise heaped upon Swedish indie. The tangible groundswell of sales surrounding the Knife, Love Is All, Jens Lekman, Lykke Li, Shout Out Louds, and Peter, Bjorn & John seems to have caught major-label attention. (And, in part as a result, Robyn already has enjoyed a #1 in the UK.) Thus, the emergence of Anna Ternheim. She's a critical and commercial success back home, where she has a Swedish Grammy. Decca recently released a comp over here called Halfway to Fivepoints, culled mostly from her hit Separation Road and presumably released to warm audiences to a forthcoming full-length. A subsequent American trek supporting svenskars El Perro del Mar and Lykke Li followed. (Ternheim dubbed it the "'Swedish Music Takes Over the World' tour.") For her part, she seems to lack either the poise of El Perro or the bubblegum appeal of Li, but Fivepoints hints at an effervescent personality who, at her best, hints at something darker and more complex than orchestral folk rock.
Ternheim achieved her folksy hybrid on tour as a one-woman act, her iPod often acting as a backing band. On record, she's far more prepared and polished, backed by a full band and strings. At times her peculiar arrangements recall the beguiling progressive style of St. Vincent's Annie Clark, but she's often subdued, whether backed by verdant orchestration ("Such a Lonely Soul") or her own acoustic guitar (as on the somber Fleetwood Mac cover of "Little Lies"). Her compositions all sound rooted in the same humble beginnings, hinting at a history as a coffee-house songstress excitedly discovering the pleasures of the audio field. Savvy listeners may have previously experienced, say, the Guillemots-by-way-of-Coldplay orchestral chorus of the opener "Girl Laying Down", but the tinker-toy way it was affixed to the piano stabs of the preceding verse seems more affectionate than affected.
But whether playing at eclectic or electric, she's not immune from leaving an impression that she's laying a bit fallow, that she's waiting for something to happen. The bluesy guitar fills of "Bridges" seem directly lifted out of some bar-band's set-list. And the Fyfe Dangerfield (Guillemots) duet "Lovers Dream" drags aimlessly, Fyfe's pipes bridled save some indiscriminate yelps that sound like they were picked up off the Through the Windowpane cutting room floor. Her missteps point at a troubling lack of discretion (or, perhaps, artistic freedom) to reject a questionable eighth choice after making seven previous good choices.
Fivepoints hints at the conflict of duality, a surprising game to play for a girl armed only with a guitar and an iPod. Love songs intertwine with romantic diffidence, folk rock clashes with Van Dyke Parks. Ternheim is capable of conceiving of her art as able to convey depth and innovation while still inadvertently slipping into bush-league tropes. Ahead of the pending release of her next full-length, it's tempting to speculate on how Americans will receive her. See, fans of the Sweden scene seem to be attracted by the perception that Peter, Bjorn, John, Lykke, and others listened to the same Fab Four, the same Dylan, the same Madonna, and the same Velvet Underground that we did, but like French yé-yé girls before them, they envisioned it possessing an exuberance that American pop has lost. It seems fairly obvious that Anna Ternheim has the exuberance, but it looks like she's still working on her vision.
