A difficult and emotional subject is expressed with the kind of beauty and hopefulness that only someone who has lived it can convey.
It’s fair to say the past decade has brought some challenges for Swedish singer-songwriter Marlene Oak. Ten years ago, she got the difficult diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Type 2, then just a few years ago she experienced an episode of severe psychosis, something she described as “terrifying”, leading her to question her own reality and even fearing there was a demon inside her. Understandably, it took her some time to recover, but even whilst still feeling fragile, she felt compelled to turn her trauma into art, and with Peter Morén, she co-wrote and produced what would be “Welcome to Oak Land”.
“I thought I always knew / What I wanted to do / Now I’m split up in two,” Oak sings on the album opener ‘Threading a Fine Line’, no doubt a reflection on the tumultuous times she’s gone through with her mental health. ‘Rhythm in My Heart’ finds Oak in a place of much more certainty: “Step by step, I’m closer to the start of new beginnings / No one’s gonna tear this dream apart / ’Cause I know what I want to do,” she asserts with determination against a musical backdrop that can best be described as buoyant. Her voice maintains a beautiful sense of strong-mindedness throughout, but there is a vulnerability there too that peaks through, even as she perfectly lands any higher notes.
On the 70s soul tinged ‘Kitchen Table’, Oak takes on a lover who has betrayed her trust: “I’m a fool / I was tricked / To believe in you / You were painting the town / Pledging to be true / But you never could stop / No, you’re never gonna stop to play.” But ‘Better Days’ finds her hoping for just what the title suggests, offering hope to anyone who has been through dark times as she promises, bright and powerful, that “When you’re feeling lost / On your own / Better days will come / So just hold on / Let me be the one by your side / I’ll walk right beside”.
‘When My Time Has Come’ isn’t as fatalistic as its title may suggest: even as Oak fears the “shadows” that want to “change and flip around” are tracking her down, she defies them by saying jauntily that when her time comes, she will “will rise up again” and “be stronger tomorrow”. “Opened up my mind / To all the lessons that I’ve learned / I bring ’em with me / Through the windows of the world,” she exclaims with joy at finally understanding who she is, and similarly on the more sombre ‘Love is Patient’, she finds peace and acceptance when learning to love herself.
“Music has always been my anchor, helping me stay grounded when everything else feels unstable,” Oak recently shared, but the album is about more than just her gaining her own stability. While it is very much inspired by Oak’s own journey, “Welcome to Oak Land” is also about finding one’s own self-acceptance and belonging, and what a beautiful and selfless message that is to put out in the world after the difficulties she’s endured. So while ‘Words Are Not Enough’ may find Oak repeating the statement in the title, the words she has shared on “Welcome to Oak Land” will definitely suffice when it comes to helping the rest of us along.
