Sjofn: Secret (Parallax Sounds, 2010)
Sjofn is a folk singer-songwriter from Alaska and Secret is her debut album. I had some doubts when I first received the album, but sometimes you better hit the play button before starting to form an opinion. Based on the cover I didn’t expect this to be my kind of stuff, but in the end it was definitely my kind of stuff. Minimalistic and simple folk music, but with very thoughtful arrangements and well crafted songs. Sometimes Sjofn’s music reminds me of Rose Melberg’s solo material. Maybe if Rose moved to Alaska and started playing folk songs on her front porch it would sound something like this. 17 songs is way too big one time dose though and Secret would get a higher amount of hearts, if I could cut it down in two and form an imaginary album out of the better half of the songs. Now there’s a danger that the real jewels just gets buried in the crowd.
