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Written in Folk Roots issue 158/159, 1996

ALE MÖLLER
Hästen Och Tranan
Amigo AMCD 732 (1996)

An inspiration. Ale Möller’s work proves that it’s possible to evolve exciting music that’s closely linked to tradition, borrows from other traditions, but doesn’t lean on any of the mainstream forms of rock, jazz or classicism; it stands up for itself and has the richness and energy to carry on moving forward.
      Hästen Och Tranan (The Horse And The Crane) pulls together many of the threads of what he’s been doing to make what I reckon is his most complete record so far. This is only the second album bearing his name solo; most of his work has been collaborative projects with a creative nexus of Swedish musicians. This is a group performance, too, but he wrote all the music, most of it for a theatre-concert show based on a novel-suite by Sara Lidman (but this album stands very much on its own, there’s no sense that this is simply “music from the show”).
      13 of the 22 tracks are songs, using lyrics by Lidman, all strong, complete and very melodic items with none of the wordy recitative sometimes associated with settings of texts. Like the instrumentals, these have an existence of their own, not depending on the show for context. The lyrics flow their resonant images into the music - there’s no need for them to be easily explained or to tell a story.
      The lead voice is that of long-time Möller collaborator Lena Willemark. In parallel with Möller’s musical evolutions, Willemark has made a unique place in singing, leaning into the thrilling tensions of microtones and using her whole voice from whisper through caressing breathiness to kulning scream with passionate intensity. I realise that overpraise can diminish, but I seriously rate her as one of the world’s major vocalists. And there’s enough of her on this album to merit buying it as a Willemark CD.
She’s a fine fiddler, too, here joining Ellika Frisell (fiddle and octave-fiddle), Roger Tallroth (mandola, guitar, harmonium) and Olle Steinholz (bass and tuned glasses). Möller himself plays mandola, lute, hammered dulcimer, shawm, percussion, harp, stråkharpa and a range of breathy wooden finger-holed and overtone flutes, all with characteristic drive and intricacy. It’s a small group, but it achieves a wide scope of sound and texture as the album moves between sparse reflectiveness, the stately melodiousness of Kommer Du Ej Snart, and the looping swing of polska, through to the call-and-response between impassioned solo voice and strident massed vocals with overtone-singing (by Rolf Lassgård) and epic-style percussion of Saiva.
      The first Planxty album or the Bothy Band showed many people that Irish music could be for them; with good marketing this could do the same for Swedish music.


© 1996 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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