Skånska Dagbladet 110221
By: PETER ELIASSON
HELEN SJÖHOLM
Malmö Concert Hall
On February 19
It took Helen Sjöholm eight long years to follow up her debut album, Visor (Songs), and once she did, she did it with a collection of cover songs from Billy Joel’s voluminous song collection. Hardly a given success, but Euforia, as the creation is called, has generally received good reviews and also rendered her a gold record. Well merited if you ask me. With the help of Tomas Andersson Wij and producer Gunnar Nordén, Sjöholm has meritorious made it Swedish and often stripped this genuine American songwriter’s creations and given them a personal appeal, without it feeling neither strained nor weird.
Of course that success was reflected at Malmö Concert Hall on Saturday. She started with the nice Euforia and the caressingly jazzy Ljudet av ett regn (Falling of the Rain), which in their own way set a kind of tone for the evening. Eight of the Joel CD’s eleven tracks were played. But, overall, this was in truth a fairly diversified evening. Not surprisingly, perhaps. Her personal track record has a bit of everything, from musicals to theatre, songs and fully-grown pop, and the singer showed it all during the over two-hour show.
The grumpy could of course characterize this as fragmented, but since Sjöholm is an all-round performer, in its best sense, she gets away with it. From the successful mix of Swedish song tradition and oriental rhythms in theater number Lustvin and Shakespeare sonet Sonnet 18, to the almost exhilarated string cover by Elvis Costello; I Almost had a Weakness and a really beautiful version – together with guitarist George Wadenius – of Nick Cave / Kylie Minogue’s hit Where The Wild Roses Grow, Sjöholm personified timeless professionalism, neat folksiness and integrity at the same time.
Though maybe not the fragmentary 80’s medley, in which Sjöholm, with a humorous touch, talked of teenage love and other catastrophes and sang snippets from the decade’s playlist, was absolutely indispensable, but it was certainly fun and done with tongue in cheek. And surprising. Who would have expected to hear the choruses of Foreigner’s I Want to Know What Love Is, and Lionel Richie’s Hello this evening?
Toward the end of the event some of the most obvious triumph cards of Joel’s catalog were picked out. The bag was tied up, which wasn´t very difficult. Honesty is one of the American’s best love songs about one of the most difficult things in a relationship, and Sjöholm’s Ärlighet brought the same clear-headed and bare melancholy relational image as the original. In connection with this I suddenly realized why the singer fits so well for Joel’s songs.
Just like the American Sjöholm has an obvious sense to mix the real with the sophisticated. Then they definitely don´t do their respective thing in the same way, they’re not even close. Though they are of course children of the same spirit. Therefore Barpianisten (Piano Man) seemed like such a successful blend of the delicious and the touching on Saturday. To tackle a classic like Piano Man and get out on the other side with ones honor intact is not easy, but Sjöholm’s richly empathic, passionate interpretation captures the essence without ever being in the vicinity of excessive respectfulness.