First Aid Kit - The Big Black and The Blue

First Aid Kit are two Swedish teenage sisters, Klara and Johanna Söderberg, who got their break on the strength of a YouTube video of them singing a breathy version of Fleet Foxes’ ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’. The video, performed in a forest, is picture-perfect, and their full-length debut should be a case of “what’s not to like?”. But unfortunately it doesn’t quite work out that way. The Söderbergs sure can sing awful pretty, but as is so often the case, it just ain’t that simple. What The Big Black and The Blue perhaps does best is show the danger ofhanding out record contracts on the back of YouTube play counts. 

The siblings’ determination to recreate Fleet Foxes’ uniquely ethereal, spun-gold sound is pretty audacious: you keep expecting opening track ‘In The Morning’ to break into the chorus of‘Blue Ridge Mountain’, so similar are its stretched out harmonies and melody. In truth, though, they never get close to the sort of cosmic magic conjured up on Fleet Foxes’ instant-classicdebut. Lovely as the pair’s voices are, they’re hampered by a tendency to lapse into faux-American accents and stretch vowels out to irritating lengths. 

That The Big Black and The Blue is the work of a 15 and 17 year-old is impressive on its own terms; the sisters certainly have their country-folk sound down pat, and their innocent, untrained voices are captured well on record. But – and this may sound harsh – their sheer youth does cut through the record somewhat, and not in a good way. Lines such as “Love is tough, life is rough on me” give proceedings a generic, vanilla-angst feel. When grown adults like Chris Martin can’t do any better, this probably isn’t that surprising. But what does surprise is the fairly staid nature of the songs. The tempo is stuck on ‘plod’, and there aren’t enough hooks to engage the ears. It’s all so tasteful and considered – aren’t teenagers supposed to be running wild with hyperactivity and getting Enter Shikari out of their system? 

Save your money and hold out for the new Laura Marling album instead.