Resmiranda (Sweden) – As long as we are breathing (single) + video

Resmiranda (Åsa Larsson) is a committed environmentalist with a particular penchant for saving the trees and forests who just happens to be a dab hand at not only songwriting but also transposing poetry into lyrics, which is no easy thing.

She has appeared in NMC on a couple of occasions previously, but not in that particular capacity. As a mufti-instrumentalist and multi-vocalist (in terms of stylisation) one of her reviews over the years featured her engaging in ‘kulning’ (calling the cows home) while another had her singing with a dog, Both went viral on You Tube.

Now she releases a new song which is an old song for which a video was made a few years but for which an audio track was not completed until now.

She says the song is about “trees and hope” which pretty well sums her up. If a prospective employer ever asked her to encapsulate her attributes in three words rather than send in a resume that is what she’d probably write I reckon.

To be more precise it is about hearing how the trees and the forest “call you to action”; a sales and marketing term which seems strangely appropriate here. Or perhaps, she says, “about listening to your inner voice deeply enough to remember that we are fundamentally nature” (as well as stardust and golden)

As is often the case the song is based on a poem, this one by Kathleen Brigidina.

There are several Swedish female singer-songwriters ploughing this furrow and I’m surprised they haven’t yet got together to write as a band although there has been a degree of cooperation on the poetry/lyricism angle.

Her style isn’t unique but it is a very rare mix of (Swedish) folk and art pop with an occasional but tasty bit of electronica thrown in. I recall being bemused by her 2019 album ‘For the Trees’ (there’s a surprise!) and its epic 33-minute final track which landed somewhere between symphonic rock, Jean-Michel Jarre and IDM.

‘As long as we are breathing’ has a mystical feel to it from the start, with single plucked strings over massed strings or synthesiser that sounds like the hovering spaceship that brought the alien to warn Earth about catastrophic future wars in ‘The Day the Earth stood still.’ In fact, in parts it could a tuneful Gregorian chant.

I assume the title refers to the trees rather than us and that is reinforced by the line “Breath by breath comes a world of change” (photosynthesis – carbon dioxide into oxygen?) and it does carry a degree of reverence about it too.

The most important thing is that both the poet and the songwriter evidently believe deeply in the subject. As the world slowly starts to turn (and rightly so) against the likes of Al Gore and exaggerated claims of ‘global boiling’ that are scaring the kids stupid, convincing them they are all going to fry in a couple of years, it is important to remember that some environmental claims remain valid and that one of them is that the trees are the lungs of the Earth and not to be messed with.

I just saw a video in which Bill Gates claimed planting trees “is for idiots”. Perhaps Resmiranda should reserve her next song just for him?

Paula Lindskoug Nyberg created the painting for the cover art.

Find Resmiranda on:

Website: https://www.resmiranda.se/