AMANDA BERGMAN - Embraced For A Second As We Die

Hajen, Jaw Lesson, Idiot Wind, Amanda Hollingby Matsson: behind these names lies, in truth, just one person: Karin Amanda Bergman Hollingby, a Swedish singer-songwriter who has collaborated with Tallest Man On Earth, was a founding member of the indie-pop supergroup Amason, and in 2016 launched a solo career under the name Amanda Bergman, with an intriguing folk-pop debut ("Docks", 2016).

It took eight years for a follow-up ("Your Hand Forever Checking On My Fever", 2024), while the wait for the third chapter has been much shorter, just two years.

Recorded in an old Abba studio, "Embraced For A Second As We Die" is a decisive step towards a refined and musically sophisticated soft rock. Amanda Bergman's warm, gently rasping voice recounts years of painful farewells and existential anxieties, delivered with a poetic, noir cadence that recalls the Blue Nile of "Hats" ("Common Like The End"). The comparison to the Scottish band comes up repeatedly, but rather than diminishing the album, it highlights the elegant contribution of the musicians: guitarist Petter Granberg, keyboardist Rasmus Lindelow and drummer Karl Hovmark.

A constant point of reference for the Swedish artist is the 1980s, the era of Fleetwood Mac ("Groby"), but also of Rickie Lee Jones and Joni Mitchell's "Night Ride Home"-era work ("Sick Of Time"). The emotional intensity remains constant even when the voice is accompanied by nothing more than a minimal guitar chord ("Never Know Like That").

The album has many strengths. First and foremost, Amanda Bergman's vocal qualities: she's one of the few singers capable of stirring visceral emotion even when tackling romanticism ("Is This How You Said You'd Be Gone") and the noblest tradition of American songwriting (the remarkable Carole King-style ballad "A Mindless Dark"). The Swedish singer-songwriter's new album isn't a record of immediate charm; the songs are at times intimate yet delicately raw (the folk ballad with a skilful touch of fretless bass, "Mexico"), but also captivating and sensual (another romantic excursion with Blue Nile-style echoes called "Grasp"), though it's in the crescendo of "Ours Is A Silent Sun" that the artist perfects a synthesis of the suffering and hope that animate the entire project.

With "Embraced For A Second As We Die", Amanda Bergman crafts an album that synthesises the most refined sounds and compositional skills of the 70s, 80s and 90s, with songs graced by an authenticity and vulnerability that express the kind of reflective, existential stock-taking that comes with midlife crisis. The melodies are solid and elegant, yet perpetually poised between anguish and comfort.

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01/02/2026