Demeters Döttrar – Söndag I Spejlet

More new formations from Gothenburg in the guise of Demeters Döttrar, a supergroup of sorts featuring Astrid Øster Mortensen, Treasury of Puppies' Charlott Malmenholt and newcomer, Ida Skibsted Cramer. Together they make a sound that won't be unfamiliar to those acquainted with their previous output, a roughly-sewn bedroom folk that leans close to the privacy of the twilight hours. There's no rap sheet to note who does what (even if Malmenholt's voice is obviously recognisable), though you might argue that such details are only partially relevant anyway, the sparsely arranged instrumentation telling half the story of a record where the ambiance of the room and gently intrusive inclusion of extraneous sound (mostly the elements percussively beating against thin roofs and single paned windows) is key to the intimate world the trio have imagined. It's an aesthetic common to the Discreet universe, present in Mortensen and Malmenholt's other truly crucial works, as well as the ghostly vistas of both Loopsel and Arv & Miljo. While this is something that we've come to associate with Gothenburg, there's a history of this kind of lo-fi minimalism that comes from all other, be that the rural solemnity of Empress and (early) Hood, the artful confessionalism of Movietone (reference track: 'Three Fires), or the magical mythos of those particularly scratchy first Garbage and the Flowers communiques. It's the folk lineage, as old as time, one that Demeters Döttrar stretch out a little further by gently imprinting their delicate footsteps into its eternal scree.