Svenska Dagbladet 110205
By: KERSTIN LUNDELL
POP
Helen Sjöholm
Rival
Helen Sjöholm doesn´t wait long before she turns up the comfort factor to max. It`s an evening everyone will enjoy. An evening where the charmed audience is humming their approval to everything Helen Sjöholm does. It sways and bends in the velvet chairs. Sjöholm is sticking out her tongue, teasing and joking with a cheeky twinkle in her eyes.
Last fall Helen Sjöholm released her CD Euforia, her first studio album in eight years, where she sang translated interpretations of Billy Joel. Tomas Andersson Wij, who has made the Swedish translations, is also at Rival this evening – settled in the audience – when Sjöholm and her band embarks on a journey with rapid changes. They mix and give. Billy Joel songs, Andersson Wij’s Ett slag för dig, Elvis Costello’s I Almost had a Weakness and an amazing 80s-pop medley that tells us about Sjöholm’s adolescence in Sundsvall.
After each song, she is careful to invite the band to applause. For despite the fact that Helen Sjöholm and her voice is the clear leader, this is team work. It´s a band of five and with a string quartet that performs together with Helen. Jojje Wadenius flanking her left side with his guitar. The pianist Martin Östergren plays with his left hand on the grand piano and the right hand on a keyboard. Nothing out of the ordinary. It’s a team effort. Together they each bring their own piece of the puzzel.
It’s a cozy friday, but the best part comes when Helen Sjöholm slows down, leaving her usual path behind. When she challenges the image of herself as the nice reformer who is loved by the Swedish people. When she turns the light down and takes on Andreas Kleerup’s recently written music for Harry Martinson’s space epic Aniara, which she played during the fall at Stockholm City Theater. Or when she assumes Kylie Minogue’s role in Nick Cave’s murder ballad Where The Wild Roses Grow (Wadenius sings Caves role). There, under the surface, Helen Sjöholm has a whole different register.