Night Music: Taken By Trees, “Greyest Love of All”

The album this cut is taken from is called East of Eden, which was released by the Secretly Canadian label, which was at that point (2009) also home to Antony and the Johnsons and Jens Lekman. So I’m not sure exactly how I found Taken By Trees, but the connection is almost certainly in some way Secretly Canadian.

Victoria Bergsman, who goes by the name Taken By Trees, moved to Pakistan for her second “solo” album, from Sweden, and recorded the album with Pakistani musicians. The result is a pretty appealing hybrid of her decidedly Swedish folk-punk internationalist backpacking roots style and the sensibilities of the local Pakistani musicians and their traditions.

It is not a rock record, I feel compelled to offer as a disclaimer, but it is only rock musicians who have prowled the world and created these unlikely hybrids, without coopting or marginalizing or archiving the local musicians. And man, does it sound nice.

Special props to the video.

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