Göteborgs-Posten 2022-12-18
By: JONATHAN BENGTSSON
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Already during the first intermission, Helen Sjöholm does something adventurous. The fifty-two-year-old artist stands at the microphone and commits, it cannot be interpreted in any other way, a bit of street poetry. She talks about lights and Christmas decorations, which then culminates in a party that includes the phrase “a square with beavers”. It’s hard to tell where we’re going, but it’s strangely pleasant. The audience laughs, Sjöholm still looks collected.
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Christmas concerts are usually emptied of risk. Christmas concerts are usually enslaved under security and tradition.
But this excellent evening with Anna Stadling and Helen Sjöholm is full of bold decisions. Stadling, for example, enters the scene in a galactic sark. The outstanding guitarist Johan Lindström ends Decembernatten står i brand (December night is on fire) with a completely ungodly solo; as if someone sifted Mark Knopfler through a saffron bun.
This Christmas concert may therefore be unusual, but it is nevertheless fine-tuned. Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling have known each other all their lives, which sounds good. They have appeared together in hospitals, at homesteads and retirement homes.
Sjöholm can easily be called Sweden’s leading singer. She sings, it may sound strange, so well that she feels kind. If you find yourself in disgrace, you are thrown to sea on a small raft, you bleat out there like a calf; Sjöholm would probably come to the rescue. But Anna Stadling also shows off her delightful register tonight.
The duo’s interpretation of I den bleka vinternatt (In the pale winter night) wraps the heart in lamb’s wool. Gläns över sjö och strand (Shine over lake and shore) is a calm, rhythmic sleigh ride back to childhood. Jag tror det blir snö i natt (I think it will snow tonight) settles into the reward system like a bowl of rice pudding. The whole last hour is actually lovely, if we’re being honest.
Also the band must be mentioned. They lurk behind the songs like patient nocturnal animals; and then they enter. During Julefrid i Göteborg (Christmas peace in Gothenburg), Lindström performs one of the best solos I’ve heard in years. Sometimes it sounds like he’s playing guitar with a shark tooth.
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Overall, this is an excellent evening. It manages to both break with traditions and nurture them.
(The entire review is not reproduced for copyright reasons)