9 Songs About Love

Album review

2009: fans of indie folk rock are in ecstasy over In Deference to a Broken Back, the debut album of the unknown group The Daredevil Christopher Wright. It holds special interest because it was mixed by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. But for all their hefty hardware (cello, baritone sax, flute, 12-string guitar, Wurlitzer), this Wisconsin trio with their blend of a thousand influences (Sufjan Stevens, Shearwater, Violent Femmes, Neutral Milk Hotel, Elliott Smith, Broken Social Scene) never quite managed to pull off their moonshot... A decade on, one of their leading lights, Jonathan Edward Sunde, has resurfaced with this brilliant 9 Songs About Love. For sure, this isn't J.E.'s first solo outing (he released Shapes That Kiss the Lips of God in 2014, Now I Feel Adored in 2017 and the self-titled J.E. Sunde in 2019) but this intimate, melodic folk treatise is very accomplished. Less baroque than that of his former band, his music manages to join in conversation with the ancients (Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield, Everly Brothers) without smelling of mothballs. Each of these nine delicate love songs is a finely-chiseled and perfectly-balanced miniature. A sepia-toned waltz with beautiful colour in the vocal parts. Gorgeous. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz