Easy to have on, easy to stay with — but harder to dismiss than that description suggests
April Records
Gustaf Ljunggren – Baritone Ukulele, Mandola, Guitars, Charango, Pedal Steel Guitar, Langspil, Tenor Saxophone, Flute, Bass Clarinet, Piano, Organ, Celeste, Synthesizer; Skúli Sverrisson – Bass Guitar (Except on Here and Not Here)
Along The Low Road is the kind of record that settles into a room without announcing itself. Easy to have on, easy to stay with — but harder to dismiss than that description suggests. Something keeps pulling attention back, even when you’re not quite listening. Part of that is the instrumentation — mostly acoustic, with electronics woven in so quietly you’re never quite sure what you’re hearing. Something you take for a synth might be a celeste, or maybe it doesn’t matter.
Swedish composer and multi-instrumentalist Gustaf Ljunggren has spent years at the center of the Scandinavian music scene, recording and performing with artists including Robyn, Emil De Waal, and a range of Nordic contemporaries, and in 2015 received the Ken Gudman prize, one of Denmark’s most significant music awards. His previous album Floreana introduced many listeners to his particular sensibility — melodic, patient, rooted in Nordic folk, minimalism, and jazz but not confined by any of them.
Icelandic bassist Skúli Sverrisson brings his own formidable credentials, having played with Laurie Anderson and Bill Frisell among others. Ljunggren has described their partnership in terms that go beyond mere collaboration: Sverrisson, he says, has embraced the music “with both profound dedication and artistic boldness.”
The opening guitar of “Lille Skotland” sounds like we’re overhearing a practice session from the guitarists in Fairport Convention or Pentangle — unhurried and quietly melancholic. Nordic culture runs deep through the record, from the historical links between Scandinavia and Scotland that give “Lille Skotland” its name, to “Stevelen,” rooted in a traditional Danish pre-Lenten festival.
Minimalism is at the heart of the title track, “Along The Low Road” — phrases swelling and receding, swelling and receding, until the music feels less like composition than a living heartbeat. “Tillfrisknandet” is brief and hymn-like, a moment of stillness. “Nine Again” is the album’s most playful moment — baritone ukulele and chirping synthesizer giving way to bass, sax, and flute, the repetition building until it feels like rapid breathing, genuinely joyful.
Ljunggren’s classical instincts surface in “Letters Melting,” where a repeated piano phrase folds a traditional chord progression into polska rhythm. “Summer Passing Letting Go” opens with piano favoring the lower register, the spare bass notes beneath it creating something close to the sound of an organ — then gradually the piano lines ascend, simple and quite beautiful, and you find yourself imagining strings somewhere up in the upper register filling in what isn’t there.
Put it on at a dinner party with good friends. You may never have heard of either musician, and you probably can’t correctly pronounce their names. But somewhere between the first glass of wine and the second, someone will stop mid-conversation and ask, “what was that he was just playing?” High praise for music this quiet.
