★★★★★
This week the Swedish duo First Aid Kit released their third album Stay Gold, giving us a taste of what's to come when they head down under for Splendour In The Grass and their string of sideshows next month. Having signed with a major label for their new record, you might think First Aid Kit might stray from their sound. However Joanna and Klara Soderberg have kept true to themselves, creating another record that celebrates their beautiful harmonies and folky orchestral sound...
- www.theaureview.com
2014-06-14
★★★★★
Typically, we picture long trips on the open road through small towns and stopping at nameless rest stops as something only Americans could understand. But First Aid Kit--Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg--have proven anyone can adopt the wandering lifestyle. Having already proven themselves as Americana folk superstars, their third studio effort, Stay Gold, sees them exploring the sentiments of anonymity and uncertainty that come when you're more used to seeing the pavement than your...
- www.cmj.com
2014-06-14
★★★★★
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...
- pitchfork.com
2014-06-12
★★★★★
From their auspicious YouTube beginnings in 2008, Swedish siblings Klara and Johanna Söderberg branded themselves First Aid Kit, attracting attention to their debut album, The Big Black and the Blue, with their cover of "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" by Fleet Foxes. Citing such American influences as Johnny and June Carter Cash, the Louvin Brothers, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons on their 2012 breakout album, The Lion's Roar, First Aid Kit look to move beyond classic Americana on their...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-06-12
★★★★★
On their previous album The Lion's Roar, the Söderberg sisters drew deeply from their influences. Now, they're finding their own voices. Every song on Stay Gold is beautifully crafted to feel like a new and complete soundscape--orchestrated strings, rolling drums and airy flutes enhance the Americana guitar riffs--bringing out the vivid imagery of their lyrics...
- filtermagazine.com
2014-06-12
★★★★★
Review: First Aid Kit, Stay Gold
opinion by MICHAEL WOJTAS
The Söderberg sisters really do seem to mean well. True opportunists, Mumford and Sons and the Lumineers have boiled down modern folk into a bankable science of stomping, clapping and whistling. As First Aid Kid, the Söderberg's have simply presented a more direct counterpart to the complexities of Fleet Foxes and Joanna Newsom, artists they clearly look up to and regularly namecheck...
- prettymuchamazing.com
2014-06-12
★★★★★
When David Cameron proclaimed admiration for the musings of Kurt Vile and the Laurel Canyon cool of First Aid Kit, it felt like an echoing of even the most absurd spin scenarios portrayed on The Thick Of It. The PM's blasé sense of self-awareness when it comes to remarking upon his feigned interest in the arts has been well-documented, and as a result, the phrase "Etonian Smiths fan" has now seemingly become part of the lexicon of the disenfranchised who feel short changed within an often...
- thequietus.com
2014-06-14
★★★★★
Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg first made their names with feather-light chamber-folk confections that echoed the soaring sweetness of Fleet Foxes. A cover of that band's "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" even helped launch the then-teenagers to YouTube fame back in 2008. But in 2014, styles have changed and so have the Söderbergs: First Aid Kit's major-label debut, Stay Gold, moves well beyond the portentous prettiness of the pair's 2012 breakthrough, The Lion's Roar...
- www.kcrw.com
2014-06-10
★★★★★
Though the sister-act of Klara and Johanna Söderberg are quite young -- both are in their early 20s -- it's hard not to picture them as weathered, yarn-spinning old American women, so wise are the characters that populate their songs. Their lyrics often scan as proverbs, lessons learned from a life battling dusty storms and rotten men. With their major-label debut Stay Gold, First Aid Kit have created an album as rich and detailed as the songs' protagonists...
- www.wonderingsound.com
2014-06-10
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