Björn Olsson
The lobster
Gravitation
Björn Olsson has musical wanderlust. So perfectly does he capture the ambiance (at least as presented by old Hollywood films) of the southwestern US on his latest album "The lobster", you figure he musta gone down there to check it out. Either that, or he's absorbed every nuance of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns (and the Ennio Morricone scores that accompanied them) from the privacy of his living room. Every element of that southwest sound is there - the evocative acoustic guitar strumming, the clippity-clop percussion (you can almost see them horsies trotting down a canyon trail), and even some enchanting whistling on perhaps the finest track, "Lång låt i A-dur". The last track is nearly an hour long and reprises themes from the earlier tracks in a sleepier, more muffled form, a distinctively cinematic tactic. There's not a lot of variety on this disc, but the mood it evokes, it evokes quite strongly. And Olsson is a casually brilliant multi-instrumentalist, a guy who could head in several different directions of his choosing (including one scoring films) to peddle his sonic wares. "The lobster"is gonna be an acquired taste by design, but it's easily the best Swedish-made, crustacean-promoting, old American west-evoking platter I've ever heard.
- Kevin Renick
