Jakob Olausson, Morning & Sunrise (De Stijl)

My review of Jakob Olausson’s new album, Morning & Sunrise, was published in this week’s LEO Weekly:

From a part of the world where the sunlight is scarce in the wintertime, Swedish singer-songwriter Jakob Olausson delivers an album that, despite its deceptively luminous title, sounds almost as stark as a Scandinavian winter. All of Olausson’s songs on Morning & Sunrise are lyrically direct, sung as if in a relatively one-sided conversation, though musically they meander, with snaking electric guitar leads overlaid upon the foundation of Olausson’s reverb-drenched strummed acoustic. In a way, Morning & Sunrise is reminiscent of Alexander “Skip” Spence’s loner masterpiece Oar, but without Spence’s supposed drug-addled goofiness or his Nashville-produced influence on the music. Aside from the just-slightly-too-ramshackle song “Engraved Invitation,” Morning & Sunrise is a sober and serious affair, like a steaming hot cup of black coffee at the crack of dawn on a cold winter morn.

Buy it from De Stijl here.