{"id":1095,"date":"2013-04-26T19:45:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T17:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/?page_id=1095"},"modified":"2022-03-13T19:15:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T17:15:33","slug":"diversified-evening-with-sjoholm","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/press-clips\/reviews-2011\/diversified-evening-with-sjoholm\/","title":{"rendered":"Diversified evening with Sj\u00f6holm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sk\u00e5nska Dagbladet 110221<\/strong><\/p>\n

By: PETER ELIASSON<\/p>\n

HELEN SJ\u00d6HOLM  <\/strong>
\nMalm\u00f6 Concert Hall <\/strong>
\nOn February 19<\/strong><\/p>\n

It took Helen Sj\u00f6holm 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 Nord\u00e9n, Sj\u00f6holm has meritorious made it Swedish and often stripped this genuine American songwriter\u2019s creations and given them a personal appeal, without it feeling neither strained nor weird.<\/p>\n

Of course that success was reflected at Malm\u00f6 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The grumpy could of course characterize this as fragmented, but since Sj\u00f6holm 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, Sj\u00f6holm personified timeless professionalism, neat folksiness and integrity at the same time.<\/p>\n

Though maybe not the fragmentary 80\u2019s medley, in which Sj\u00f6holm, 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?<\/p>\n

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\u00b4t very difficult. Honesty is one of the American’s best love songs about one of the most difficult things in a relationship, and Sj\u00f6holm’s \u00c4rlighet 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.<\/p>\n

Just like the American Sj\u00f6holm has an obvious sense to mix the real with the sophisticated. Then they definitely don\u00b4t do their respective thing in the same way, they\u2019re 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 Sj\u00f6holm’s richly empathic, passionate interpretation captures the essence without ever being in the vicinity of excessive respectfulness.<\/p>\n

Back<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sk\u00e5nska Dagbladet 110221 By: PETER ELIASSON HELEN SJ\u00d6HOLM   Malm\u00f6 Concert Hall On February 19 It took Helen Sj\u00f6holm eight long years to follow up Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":946,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1095","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1095\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}