I’m not quite sure how I haven’t written about Swedish indie folk songwriter Sea Lion before. She’s certainly an artist I’ve come across previously, and her individual brand of quiet, understated and stripped back acoustic guitar based tracks is the type of music I often reach for.
Behind the name Sea Lion is the musician Linn Osterberg, and through that name she’s been a prolific released of music over the last few years. Born in a small coastal town in Sweden, she spent some time in Australia before returning to Gothenburg where she has quietly set about releasing her music, starting with ‘Desolate Stars’ back in 2015 through to ‘Pass this Way’ at the end of last year.
She’s clearly always sitting there with her guitar writing songs, because not only does she have a new single out already, but there’s an album on its way too. Entitled ‘I Heard there’s Music on the Town, it will be released in the winter. From that album she’s released ‘Some Kind of Angel’, which she described on her Facebook page as ‘a slow, sad song… that would fit the vibe of this summer’. It’s written ‘’about the people in our lives that pass us by because of timing or circumstance.’’
Of course it’s not lost on me that pretty much all of her songs could fit the vibe of this summer, but to me her music isn’t so much sad, as just quietly reflective. For sure ‘Some Kind of Angel’ registers quite high on the ‘Mirel Wagner Scale of Bleakness’ (the tool we use here to measure the level of misery and despair in songwriting), but it’s gentle and thoughtfully expressed, and in particular the lovely contribution of violinist Katja Riis Eilertsen is worth listening to.
Take a listen to ‘Some Kind of Angel‘ here.
Photo by Olof Heinö