The Swedish-Danish quartet David’s Angels dedicated its fourth album, «Thanks To You», «to the flow and the similarities that bring people closer». David’s Angels – vocalist Sofie Norling, keyboards player Maggi Olin, bassist David Carlsson and drummer add Michala Østergaard-Nielsen – adds that «Thanks To You» is about gratitude, and is an exploration of music «as a therapy that surrenders our worries to a mutual flow and the experiences this leads to. The intent is to communicate with vibrations, sounds and small stories of music for a mutual recovery, a uniting moment and an exploration of how we can go back to that moment again».
David’s Angels conduct this musical therapy by expanding its dreamy-atmospheric, angel-like aesthetics with some «brutal jazz», more free and edgy sound and dynamics, but clearly not the brutal jazz of Peter Brötzmann’s school or his heirs. The quartet hosts the Canadian trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, who already played on the quartet’s third album «Traces» (Kopasetic Productions, 2017), and hosts guitarist Torben Waldorff and sax player Andreas W Andersson.
David’s Angels always excelled in sketching emotional storms. The warm, angelic-like voice of Norling and her passionate delivery introduces the listener to the complex emotional stories while the rippling sounds of Olin’s Fender Rhodes and piano, and the delicate and hypnotic pulse of Carlsson and Østergaard-Nielsen embrace and solidify these nuanced stories, with an impressive sense of elegance and grace. Jensen cleverly intensifies the emotional dramas of song-stories like «Bringin’ Us Close», the title song and «The Flood» and sounds like an organic part of David’s Angels. Waldroff adds a rough, distorted edge on «Ett helt liv», a song that begins as a sensual bossa nova, and takes Østergaard-Nielsen to a short but intense and wild duel on «All That I Have Left». «Thanks To You» is concluded with a wordless, touching hymn, “Om”, where the voice of Norling entangles beautifully with the singing voice of Andersson saxophone.
Only 34 minutes long, but David’s Angels deliver a sublime and moving musical therapy.
Eyal Hareuveni
Sofie Norling (v), Maggi Olin (Rhodes, p), David Carlsson (b), Michala Østergaard-Nielsen (dr, perc), Ingrid Jensen (tp), Torben Waldorff (g), Andreas W Andersson (s)
