Daily Loaf

Stockholm’s Taken By Trees is the name of Victoria Bergsman’s latest solo project, who, for 11 years (until 2006), was lead singer of The Concretes. You may recognize The Concretes’ song “Say Something New” from the Target commercial. Or maybe not, I don’t know how much TV you watch.

Before creating Taken By Trees, she collaborated with Peter, Bjorn and John on their infectious, whistle-heavy single, “Young Folks,” which also you may recognize. Anyway, Bjorn then returned the favor by producing and performing in her 2007 debut L.P., The Stark and Gentle Open Field, a beautiful album recorded in only six days.

Although we already established that she is from Sweden, you may notice that Victoria’s lyrics are written in English. Her explanation: “Swedish is really hard to rhyme and it’s too scary, also, to write in Swedish.”

“The album sounds like a quiet forest in winter,” said Sarah Tomlinson, a music critic for The Boston Globe and L.A. Times. “You feel like it’s a hushed mood. She’s telling these stories, or singing these lullabies, and you sort of have to draw in close to listen. That’s what makes it so appealing.”

Against the warnings by the Swedish government that they couldn’t guarantee her safety, Taken By Trees recorded the second L.P. in Pakistan. Although while in the studio, the electricity would go off for an hour every three hours, the 32-minute-long East of Eden was released September 8, 2009.

Click here to listen to a December 27, 2007 NPR music interview & profile. Visit the myspace page here and website here.

Taken By Trees doesn’t have any dates scheduled because well, she can’t afford it.  Do you have any ideas on how to help make it happen?

As always, whenever possible, please buy your music from your local independent music store by people who know and love music and not from retailers like Wal-Mart (soulless, globally-homogenizing, community-killers) or i-Tunes (albums should be listened to as an entire composition with album cover and liner notes in hand). Incidentally, these two companies sell more music than any other retailer in the United States. That my friend, bites.

Taken By Trees rocks.

If you agree, please visit wednesday-music.com! Then, join the once weekly (on Wednesday) mailing list or better yet, join the pep squad and get tons of free junk (actually, just wednesday-music stickers and pencils- but really great stickers and pencils).

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