Amanda Bergman’s latest album, ‘embraced for a second as we die’, is comforting, sweeping, a pop elegance that is a rare thing nowadays. Rather than seeking a label to fit into, it excels at being of its own unique voice. The flowers on the cover are captured in the romantic sway of the songs, both the beauty and sadness of flowers, the temporary lifespan of the things that we love.
The 1980s shot through a twenty-first century lens, as seen by a Scandinavian, it is an intriguing listen. The Swede Bergman invites us into a romantic, synth world fashioned by pain and joy.
Life on her Swedish farm where she has a recording studio and raises her two children, and the near-fatal accident of her husband and bandmate have profoundly impacted and fuelled Bergman with a sense of the existential journey.
She has her eye on the precipice of life, our mortality, how fragile it all is, and the chasm of death always below, waiting to ensnare us, infusing her songs. Yet, she squeezes hope and conjures magic, and her small community of musicians and friends are evidently in love with sharing music, playing together, communicating in this superior way.
This is their happy place; they go there for communion, for salvation, for escape from the trials and tribulations of individual and global life, switching off by switching on to something transformational.
The fierce and picturesque existence of severe Scandinavian conditions infiltrates her songs, a harshness twisted into beautiful shapes. Her way of delivering her songs in English is mighty convincing, at times more beguiling and believable than those using it as their native language.
Across the 10 tracks on display here, you get the feeling something tender and meaningful is taking place, songs that stir a curiosity to return to, to familiarise oneself with, to try to crack the songs like the intriguing codes they are (see the track ‘is this how you said you’d be gone’). As if the songs had been here all along, familiarity startling, necessary, vital to the album’s overall impression.
Some albums beg further attention to unfold their true charms, secrets akin to treasures, and Bergman’s early 2026 record, out of the traps ahead of all other participants and almost in a hiding place, is no different. Only a multitude of listens, the album then under one’s skin, will enable us to understand quite what a thing of beauty there is here.
Some very fine albums are immediate in some ways, and in others are the greatest of secrets to unravel over time. On the face of things, it looks like a cracking record quietly requesting adulation in spades – put simply, music speaking for itself.
The way Bergman revisits the eighties and gets it so gorgeously right, as witnessed on the closing track, ‘the moon in e minor’, she stands out in the present – the 2020s. A compelling listen to get 2026 started with, and a captivating album that flirts with the shadow of death in a sumptuous sonic feast.
With the current global state of things, the trip back in time is both a surprise and a most welcome distraction, and it’s hard not to fall into the enticing pool the artist has fashioned around herself and then summoned us toward.
(Continues after the Spotify link)
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amandabergmanofficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bergmanama/
Bandcamp: https://amandabergman.bandcamp.com/music
