Credit: Found On Internet

makes bloody, bloody, bloody good music. ABBA, Backyard Babies, Hellacopters, Peter Bjorn and John, The Cardigans (and fuck off if you’re judging them on the handful of singles you’ve heard), and then of course there’s The Concretes, and their relatively recently-departed singer, Victoria Bergsman, and her solo project, Taken By Trees.

Like The Concretes, Bergsman uses surprisingly simple little melodies to build songs around. How Taken By Trees differs is by stripping down the increased arrangements. Album opener, ‘Tell Me’, just has a simple beat occasionally rapped on a tambour, and a guitar line that’s simpler than making toast. But Bergsman’s vocal sounds all the more delicately haunting for it.

Indeed, the reflective and sadly-smiled tones of track ‘Lost And Found’ are one of the few moments that the album ever really sounds like it was put together by something approaching a band – and even then it’s still minimalist. Bergsman’s solo record really does sound like a single woman’s labour of musical love. All too often, “solo” records from artists used to playing in a larger collective get bogged down as artists add layer upon layer of unnecessary orchestration to the mix. With her new project, Bergsman keeps it intimate and keeps it under control.

It is tempting to describe ‘Open Field’ as lethargic, but that implies there is something lazy rooting down its languid melodies. Likewise, to call it dreamy, brings with it pesky connotations of being too ephemeral and forgetful, when neither is applicable. Taken By Trees won’t get your pulse racing, but they will take you to that blissful state when you’re not quite asleep, not quite awake, and everything seems right in the world. This is an album to happily relax a summer away to.

‘Open Field’ by Taken By Trees is out on Rough Trade on June 18.