Astrid Swan (Finland) – Leveling Up (single/possible future album track)

Astrid Swan has learned to live in the moment. Now almost a decade since being diagnosed with a potentially fatal condition and having thought she had released her final work she’s still going strong and churning out high class songs, if she’ll pardon the black humour, like there’s no tomorrow.

Together with her occasional collaborator and fellow Finn Stina Koistinen (aka Stinako) who has had her own well chronicled medical issues to deal with they are like Nordic beacons of hope for those that thought they had lost it.

‘Leveling up’ (she uses the US English spelling) is a phrase used in different ways. It resonates here in the UK because it refers to successive governments’ half baked attempts to create wealth in the northern part of the country to match that in the south, especially the area around London.

Those attempts have been an abysmal failure but that’s a noun that doesn’t figure in Astrid Swan’s lexicon. And what’s more, with ‘Leveling up’ , in which she acknowledges the extra time she has been granted, she launches a new song cycle, hopefully leading to another album to follow 2021’s ‘D/Other’.

Oh, and since then she’s written and published a novel. There’s no stopping her. Like Chumbawamba, she might get knocked down but she gets straight back up again.

What I’ve always liked about Swan’s music is the sanguine serenity it brings to it. The principle opening chords to this song are disheartening to put it mildly despite the little piano distractions and noises off that are thrown in but her vocal – a little like Björk’s in places – simply oozes inspiration and optimism and drags it to that other level.

“Simple truths disappear. I walk to the stage” she sings and you just know she’s going to keep on doing that.

Astrid Swan and her band perform at Soliti 15 @KULT Helsinki on the 26th September.

“Slowly, new music will appear, I promise” she says on social media. And it will.

Find her on:

Website: https://astridswan.blogspot.com/