Vox Continental is back with news of new music from Scandinavia and live events in the Czech Republic, Germany and the Netherlands.
It has been a few weeks since our last Vox Continental outing. With this column going out on the last Thursday of the month, and our annual break for Christmas and New Year meaning that the December date fell when we were already into the holidays, I got a longer break than most over the holiday period – and I can’t say it wasn’t appreciated. But, as a result, we’ve got a packed column this month with a lot of new music, so let’s get into it.
There’s some good new americana music coming out of Sweden over the next couple of months. On their fifth album “Still in Motion“, Swedish band Wildie are celebrating a decade as a band and a sound that combines americana with Scandinavian folk and traditional singer-songwriter. They look to tap into the melancholy of Nordic life with their songs about everyday occurrences. Scheduled for release in early March, this album shows the band on particularly good form and will have strong appeal for fans of the Laurel Canyon sound and artists like Jackson Browne. This is an album full of good songs, and it deserves to bring the band to a wider audience. Our sample is ‘Calm The Ocean Down‘, the most recent single to be taken from the album, ahead of its upcoming release.
Steph Upper Lip is the creation of Swedish musician Stefan Blomqvist, frontman of classic rock band Black Paisley. Working with Nashville producer John Kennedy, this is a passion project all about producing high-quality country rock, reminiscent of the likes of Chris Stapleton and Jason Aldean. The new single, ‘Welcome to This Town‘ is a song about last year’s Los Angeles wildfires and the burning of Tinseltown, and it’s a strong, gritty song very much in the country rock tradition, even if it does lean a little more into the rock side of the equation. There’s an album due later in the spring, and we’ll hope to bring news of that when the release date is announced. One to watch out for.
Moving to Norway, we first mentioned Ole Kirkeng back in the October of last year, with a taster for his sophomore album, “Cowboy Lie Detector Machine”. The good news is that the album is being released tomorrow (Friday, 30th January) by those good folks at Die With Your Boots On Records. The thing we love about Ole is that he’s not trying to disguise the fact that he’s not American and goes out of his way to highlight the fact that he’s a very Norwegian musician performing his version of americana music. “Cowboy Lie Detector Machine is not an attempt to be American, but to make an album that genuinely feels like us. We wanted to make something from Oslo. We love country. We like English-language music, but we’re not from the prairie. We’re five boys who live in Gamle Oslo and north of Grünerløkka”. This is exactly what we like to see for Vox Continental, and we applaud artists bringing European influences to their take on americana. Ole writes genuinely witty and clever lyrics, and this album deserves to be widely listened to. Appropriately, our choice of track from this excellent album is ‘Foreign Country Singer Blues‘, and a great live performance from Ole and his band.
Also from Norway, we have Rebecca Bangfield. “Untangling” is the second EP from this talented singer-songwriter, who is also a qualified school teacher, specialising in 17th–18th-century Norwegian childhood history and modern English literature, and that background shows in the sharp, creative lyrics she brings to her songs. She competed on the Norwegian series of The Voice in 2024, which helped her secure a support spot with top Norwegian artist Malin Pettersen, leading to her being signed by Jansen Records, who are releasing this new EP. We have the title track for you, a jaunty slice of pop americana.
Back in November, we featured a single release from Icelandic artist Ásgeir, and can now confirm that his new album, “Julia“, will be released next month, on February 13th, on One Little Independent Records. This will be his fifth album, and there is also an excellent new single, ‘Against The Current‘, out now. More significantly, Ásgeir will be spending April through to July on tour. He starts out in the UK before moving on to a wider European tour that will feature gigs in 7 different countries, before he crosses the Atlantic to the USA for another 13 gigs. Details of dates and venues can be found at the artist’s website.
Finally, on the new music front, we have the debut album from Finland’s Raivo Jackson. This five-piece band, started by singer and songwriter Saska Lammila, has spent the last 15 years getting to this point, starting with Lammila’s one-man project in London, only evolving into a full band once he moved back to Helsinki. The album, “Tangled Up In Roots” brings us songs of polarisation and social exclusion, very much subjects for our time, a combination of Nordic Noir and americana!
Moving on from new releases, we have news of major events in the Czech Republic and Germany. First up, this year’s European Bluegrass Summit will be held from the 6th to the 8th March at the Orea Pyramida Hotel in Prague. The event includes panel speakers, band showcases and, of course, jam sessions. This year’s showcased bands include the Netherlands’ Lonesome Malones, No Man’s Land, an all-female band drawn from five different European countries, and local progressive bluegrass band, Rooster Riders, among a host of others. Check out all the details for the summit and details of what else is happening in European bluegrass circles at the EBMA’s website.
And over in Oberhausen in Germany, those go-getters at the highly regarded Static Roots Festival are already promoting this year’s event, even though it doesn’t happen until July 10th & 11th! It’s the premier event of its kind in Germany, and this year marks its 10th anniversary, so it will be sold out well in advance of the festival itself. If you’re planning to attend what is always a superb festival, you need to start thinking about getting your tickets well in advance. The only confirmed band at this time is Vandoliers, the acclaimed Texan cow-punk band from Dallas-Fort Worth, but more will be added in the coming weeks, and you can keep up to date with this year’s line-up at the festival website.
Finally, for this month’s column, we have some good news for Netherlands-based fans of great songwriting. One of Canada’s finest singer-songwriters, Lynn Miles, is returning to the Low Countries for an exclusive set of dates. Starting on the 6th March at Koudekerk and running through to Utrecht on the 15th, Lynn will play a total of 8 public gigs over the 10-day period and will be backed by Joey Wright (guitar/vocals) and Rebecca Campbell (vocals). Details for all the concerts can be found at the Must Have Music website.
To mark this special tour, Lynn Miles’ first visit to the Netherlands in some 6 years, Continental Records are releasing a new album, “A Bouquet of Black Flowers”. This special album features 15 tracks taken from volumes 1–4 of her Black Flowers project. The Black Flowers albums are an attempt by this particularly prolific songwriter to record as many of her songs as possible, using just her voice and guitar or piano. She has said of the recordings that “I like sending songs out that are just me and my guitar, or piano, because that’s the way they’re written and I feel like they are charcoal sketches”. Details of this album, which is a compilation of some of of the best Black Flowers recordings to date, can be found at this Bandcamp page.
And that’s all for this month. We’ll be back next month, and remember –
If you are an americana-influenced artist operating out of mainland Europe and have new music or a tour to promote, let me know. Contact information is on the webzine page under ‘Info’. This column is published on the last Thursday of every month throughout the year.
