Review: Kristofer ?str?m “Loupita” CD

Here's another great disc of acoustic singer/songwriter stuff from a Swedish artist. I'll preface, as usual, with my disclaimer that I'm not into much of this stuff, but now and then I'll hear one song by someone that hits me, and I'll seek out more, and that's the case here. ?str?m's got an excellent singing voice that sounds very relaxed and natural, not to mention ever so slightly different (albeit very "normal") from a lot of these types of singers. His English delivery is superb, but I'd honestly probably prefer to hear him sing in Swedish just because it would make things all the more unusual. But that's just me. Musically it's basically a one-man show with acoustic guitar, harmonica, and vocals. There's not a lot of overdubbing or anything, though the recording is smoother and more robust than most of this stuff. Everything sounds warm and lush with great resonance, and it's not going for that whole rugged aesthetic (granted everything was recorded in four days, and one track is a rough home recording). Hell, in "Devil" he breaks a string during the song and keeps right on going after a quick chuckle! On rare occasion there might be an added layer of guitar work, but even the harmonica makes very rare appearances. Stronger than all are the amazing female vocals that accompany ?str?m with some impeccable harmonies, notably in more melancholic pieces like the incredible "The Wild". Musically something about "Spinning" has more of a country sort of feel to it, and the harmonica in the distance might add to that, but vocally it's definitely in line with everything else here, and the same goes for "Better With the Night". Like "Loupita #3" and "Loupita #2" before it (the tracks appear in reverse order throughout the disc), "Loupita #1" is an instrumental with only some humming, but the fingerpicked guitar parts are really quite emotional, carrying its weight for four minutes without a hitch. Very nice. The design is quite minimal, with clean text, lots of blank cream-colored space, a few illustrative images of wolves, and that's about it. It looks pretty nice, though. Stripped down to match the vibe of the music, I'd say. Lyrically nothing really strikes me. You know, songs of love and loss and that sort of thing, but fairly simple and usually open. Nothing special (though admittedly "Just Another Lovesong" is quite fucking moving in its blatant honesty). I'm definitely into this, though. As usual I always find myself wishing they'd get as dark as possible all the time and just try to make every song the kind of song that makes you want to shoot yourself, but that's almost never the case, so... I'll take what I can get! I think things are a little long-ish in the end, as the material is rather consistent and somber, plus slow moving, so 45 minutes of it might be a little more than necessary, but that's not a big deal. This is definitely mood music of sorts, so in such circumstances I think it would play through very nicely. This guy's very talented, and I hope I can start getting into more of this stuff at some point by exploring artists like this.