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Written in fRoots issue 233, 2002
 

GROUPA
Fjalar
Xource XOUCD 134 (2000)

Any band with Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset in it is destined to have its wildness nodes comprehensively tweaked. He’s well settled in as a member of Groupa now, and is having due effect. His unique wood, skin, metal and stone kit is rolling thunder, breath and clatter under and around the rich drones and surges of Mats Edén’s fiddles, the airiness of Jonas Simonson’s harmonic and other flutes, and Rickard Åström’s natural-toned keyboards, which are so well integrated and free from electronic plastickiness that the music remains meatily open-sounding and non-chordal, with Isungset adding high-energy jew’s-harp zizz as well as percussion like an earthquake in Santa’s workshop.
      There’s that exuberantly hefty halling/polska swing that Groupa and Filarfolket pioneered, wild extemporisations lurching into heartland traditional playing, and limpid pools of stillness too. On top of that are the just-right vocals of the other newish Groupanaut, Sofia Karlsson, who like Isungset is now fully integrated and takes an equal part in arranging and composition, and with her the band has turned another corner in its long and continuously interesting career, the backbone of Swedish new-roots since the early 1980s, for most of which (apart from 1990’s Månskratt featuring Lena Willemark) it has been instrumental.
      In both song and instrumental terms, this album is another high point; fresh, full of melody, deftness of touch and massive energy.


© 2002 Andrew Cronshaw


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