Eskilstuna-Kuriren 110210
By: ANNE-LIE ANDERSSON
There is great art to fill a two-hour concert of songs the majority of the audience has no direct relation to – and make a success of it. Helen Sjöholm succeeds, thanks to her voice, her musicality, her northern ancient powers and a great band backing her.
MUSIC
Helen Sjöholm sings Billy Joel, and more.
With, among others, Jojje Wadenius, Martin Östergren, André Ferrari and a string quartet. The Locomotive, Eskilstuna
She nails the problem straight away, when she already in the first small talk between her songs notes that most of those who hear the name Billy Joel thoughtfully grab their chin, humming a little apprehensive and say “yeah right, him…”
For Swedes perhaps Billy Joel is mostly Just the Way You Are, Uptown Girl, River of Dreams and Honesty. In many other countries, mainly in his homeland U.S.A, he lined up a lot of hits during the glory days of the 70’s and 80’s.
That Helen Sjöholm sings his music may seem slightly unexpected. Until you hear her story about how the album came to be. And until I realized that the link between them is Tomas Andersson Wij, who made all the translations into Swedish. And, of course, until you hear her sing his songs.
It´s not only the big famous titles she choses, but several small beautiful pearls. For long moments I don´t recognize a tone, but I´m not significantly disturbed by that but am sucked into the music, thanks to the singer and the musicians way of interpreting it.
The concert includes not only Billy Joel material, but among other things we are offered a couple of Andersson Wij-tracks, an Elvis Costello, Gabriella’s song and a fun medley from Helen Sjöholm’s youth years of 1984-85. Euforia is the name of the album with Tomas Andersson Wij’s translations of Billy Joel’s song treasures, which Helen Sjöholm released together with these guys last fall. Euforia is a good summary of their concert in a nearly sold-out Locomotive. Together we experienced forgotten memories, and memories we didn´t even know we had. The only thing missing was that Tomas Andersson Wij personally should have been there.