First time mentions in the column for artists from Iceland and Denmark, plus new recordings from Sweden, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands!
As ever, with this column, Nordicana is well to the fore, and we start with a new collaboration between the Norwegian Grammy-winning duo Konradsen and Chicago songwriter Gia Margaret, known for the success of her acclaimed 2023 album, “Romantic Piano”.
Konradsen is the project of Jenny Marie Sabel and Eirik Vildgren, and the new single, ‘Nick of Time‘, was released earlier this month. It is the first song from Konradsen’s upcoming album, featuring Gia Margaret, and other guest artists, which is scheduled for release in the new year. Konradsen and Gia Margaret began swapping song ideas back and forth between Oslo and Chicago, and the result is a quiet, spectral meditation on patience and uncertainty that highlights the value of international collaboration on such musical projects. The single release is accompanied by a very clever animated video, made by artist and designer Jacob Grönbech Jensen, which can be seen in the clip at the end of this article.
We’d hoped to have at least one upcoming Christmas single to talk about this month. Thomas & The Angry Hearts had said, when we featured them back in August, that they were thinking about recording a new Christmas single, but we now find they have shelved that plan in order to demo a couple of new songs in the studio. And the exciting thing about that is that AUK’s very own John Lee will be going with them! John is spending a few days with the band in Norway and will be interviewing them in some depth for a future article. Nordicana is very much on the rise at the moment, and here at Vox Continental, we’re looking forward to hearing what John has to say about the band and the whole americana scene in Norway.
It’s all about the north in this month’s edition of this column, and we now move up to the ‘Land of Ice & Fire’ for Icelandic singer-songwriter Ásgeir, who has his 5th studio album, “Julia”, coming out in February and ahead of that he has released new single ‘Sugar Clouds’ and it shows distinct connections to the folk and americana artists he lists as influences, especially Leonard Cohen and Daniel Lanois.
After years of drawing on the work of his poet father for lyrics, Ásgeir has penned his own lyrics for this album, and they offer a rare insight into the life of this enigmatic musician. ‘Sugar Clouds’ has him dwelling on past regrets while looking at future hopes over a beautiful melody composed in 7/8 time. It suggests an album that will be both contemplative and musically fascinating. Ásgeir is quite well known to international audiences, with his debut album, “Dýrð í dauðaþögn” (In the Silence), becoming the best-selling debut recording in Icelandic history, but his work may not have been picked up by many americana fans. This could be the album to change that, if this single is anything to go by. In previous months, we’ve seen Nordic musicians increasingly stretching the boundaries of what we think of as americana music, and it looks like the Icelandic scene is going to continue that trend. The album is due out on February 13th and is one to look out for.
More evidence of Iceland’s growing contribution to this genre comes with the new album from acclaimed singer Ólöf Arnalds, “Spíra”, is due out on the 5th December. This artist is more on the folk end of things, with comparisons to Vashti Bunyan and the early Nico solo albums. Her latest single is “Heimurinn Núna” (Our World Now), a love song that on the surface is playful but touches on themes such as faith, responsibility, and neurodiversity (or so we’re told. Anyone speak Icelandic?). You don’t need to speak the language to hear the beauty in the song or appreciate the stunning effect of her voice and simple guitar work. A classically trained singer and violinist, Ólöf has been active on the Icelandic music scene for thirty years, which seems amazing given how young she looks, but more understandable when you discover that she started out working with her mother. She released her own debut album in 2007, “Við og Við” (Now and Again; wider international release in 2009), and has gone on to make a further five albums. The new album is exclusively in Icelandic and features simple, stripped-back arrangements, as shown on this new single.
Elsewhere in the region, we have the first single, ‘Not Impossible’, from Viic Woods’ debut album “Unravel Time”, due out in February of next year.
Viic Woods is the name adopted for the solo project of Swedish musician and visual artist Victoria Skoglund, previously known for her work in the bands Audrey and Mire Kay. Her work as Viic Woods is a little reminiscent of early country rock, and it’s a more earthy sound than some of the other Nordic contributions we’ve heard this month. Swedish artists have come to dominate European americana in recent years, and this single from Viic Woods certainly packs a punch. ‘Not Impossible’ is about the will to move forward, even in the face of loss. It is an intimate song that also reflects the album’s broader themes of time, loss, ecological balance, and hope as an action rather than an idea. Based on this single, this is an album we’re definitely looking forward to hearing in its entirety. Viic Woods may be the next big name in Swedish americana.
We’ve mentioned Norwegian master instrumentalists Himmelskip a couple of times over recent months, as they’ve released singles to trail their debut album, and we’re pleased to announce that the album, “Den Siste Kvegdriver” (The Last Cowboy), is now out. The band are becoming well known for their ability to bring together americana, jazz and Nordic folk in their music, creating soundscapes for never-realised Western movies, where the Gulf of Mexico is ringed with impossible fjords! Sounds weird, I know, but they really do produce some amazing music. More details on this new album can be found here.
I think Strawberry Jesus may be the first Danish artist we’ve featured in this column. Copenhagen-born and raised musician, Jonathan Bøge Jensen, is the man behind the fruit-flavoured name, and ‘It All Went South‘ is his first recorded single, and he’s currently in the act of finalising his debut EP, “Dreams and Realities“, which should be released early next year.
Jonathan Bøge Jensen has been a part of the Danish folk/americana scene for some time, producing what he calls “spiritual americana music”. His inspirations include Bonnie Prince Billy and Conor Oberst, and he admits to a long-time love of classic americana artists, such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, but his enduring fascination is for the music of Bob Dylan. He started out, as many do, in a blues cover band, playing with friends, but the discovery of The Band and then the music associated with Greenwich Village and the American Folk boom of the 1960s started Jonathan looking for a different way to make music, and he has since focused on working solo as an acoustic singer-songwriter, with guitar and harmonica, playing what he calls “music that speaks to the heart”. His aim for Strawberry Jesus is one of wider collaboration, “letting other people into the world of my songs. Inviting people to play them with me, to mix and give feedback and to enjoy the songs and the different paths they can lead us down, when we approach from our different viewpoints. I enjoy that a lot“.
You can find out more about this fascinating artist over at his Facebook page.
We have an interesting single release from Germany-based Broom Bezzums. This duo is actually British and is made up of musicians Mark Bloomer and Andrew Cadie. The duo came together in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany, where each of them had settled, following a chance meeting at an Irish music session in Kirchheimbolanden over 20 years ago. They made their stage debut in a distillery in the Moselle town of Ediger-Eller, and they have twice won the highly regarded German Record Critics’ Award in the “Folk & Singer-Songwriter / World Music” category. This song, ‘Reincarnation‘, comes from their recently released “Rouse & Raise Your Voice” album and has an unusually (for this duo) strong americana sound to it. Andrew Cadie told me, “Mark wrote that song at a time when we were listening to a lot of Old Time music in the tour bus – I can definitely hear the subliminal influence of those songs on the piece. I suppose me playing resonator guitar on it added to that flavour too, even if I was trying to approach it from a Northumbrian fiddler perspective!“
Andrew has recently released his own solo album, “Flooding the Sea“, and, while it remains rooted in traditional English folk music, there are one or two tracks with something of an americana feel to them. It would be nice to think this very talented pair of musicians might venture a little further into the world of americana in future. You can find out more about them, their recordings, and their upcoming live German dates over at their website.
Staying in Germany, we’re happy to announce that the new album from Markus Rill & The Troublemakers, which we heralded back in September, is out now. Titled “Good As New“, the album is being released in two stages, with the CD available now to fans ordering via email, contact details on the Markus Rill website. The CD and download options will also be available from the band’s Bandcamp page. Towards the end of March 2026, it will be launched on all streaming services, and there’ll be a second push to promote the album.
Rill is one of continental Europe’s premier roots rockers, with Rolling Stone magazine raving about his “brilliantly written songs that shimmer with ambiguity” and No Depression writing about his “great depth as a songwriter, producer, and arranger”. Rill has long been working on the authenticity of his pursuit of americana songwriting, having studied his musical craft in Austin, Texas, and refined it on several album productions in the studios of Nashville, Tennessee. A new album from him and his great band, The Troublemakers, is definitely cause for celebration.
Finally, for this month’s roundup of the European americana scene, we’re heading to the Netherlands, where roots rockers Little Hat have their second album out on Continental Records, “Rockin’ This Joint Tonight“. This band have a very authentic southern States-style vintage R&B sound, built around a three-piece lineup of guitar (Willem van Dullemen), drums (Paolo de Stigter, aka Dr. Velvet), and a powerhouse vocalist and harmonica player (Machiel Meijers). This is real jukejoint music that’s guaranteed to get the blood pumping and probably the polar opposite of some of the tracks we mentioned earlier in the column, but that’s the strength of the americana scene in continental Europe; there’s something for everyone, and it’s why I think there’s a big future for this music here on the mainland. It’s going to be particularly interesting to see how the live scene develops here, and the summer festival season promises to be increasingly exciting, with some of the bands that are starting to emerge.
Staying with the Low Countries, we end this month’s column with news that one of the Netherlands’ most established singer-songwriters, the always excellent Eric Devries, is lining up a lot of live appearances for the coming year. In a long and varied career that has included being a member of the most recent incarnation of Iain Matthews’ legendary band, Matthews Southern Comfort, Devries has become something of a standard bearer for both European and Dutch americana. His latest solo album, his fifth, “Traveller’s Heart“, came out in September, and he has embarked on an extensive string of live appearances that now extends well into next year, with new dates constantly being added. You can check all upcoming live shows on his website.
That rounds up the column for this month and for this year! Vox Continental goes out on the last Thursday of every month, and next month that particular Thursday will be Christmas Day. I’ll obviously be far too busy arguing with Santa Claus over why I should be on the nice, as opposed to the naughty list, to put together a demanding column like this! We’ll be back in January and, regardless of what you do and don’t celebrate, we wish each of you the holiday period you would wish yourselves.
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.
