New Album from Taken By Trees
Remember that song “Young Folks” from back in 2006 by Peter Bjorn and John? The one with the whistling and the bongos and the cooing female vocals? Well, that cooing female is back with a new album from her solo project Taken By Trees, but those bongos have been replaced with pedal steel and dub-step. Let’s get tropical.
Victoria Bergsman was the lead singer from The Concretes from 1995 to 2006. Her voice was the very definition of the Swedish Pop sound of that time. So 
what’s a girl to do after years of road-weariness, stage fright and internal frustrations within the band? Swear off the industry and, immediately after, sign a new contract for a new project…with the industry. And thus, Taken By Trees was born in 2006.
Built from disillusionment and rejection, empty promises and then the refusal to give in, Victoria Bergsman struck out on her own and began documenting her explorations as an individual recently set free. She released Open Field on Rough Trade in 2007 and then East of Eden in 2009 where she traveled to Pakistan and employed the help of a number of amateur musicians to help her with the songwriting and instrumentation on the album. Both records are tender and sweet. Bergsman’s voice relates a range of emotional nuance that is hard to deny. You feel for this singer, and then, without realizing, you feel like this singer. Her thoughts are our thoughts, her lines our lives. It is this delicacy and fragility that will continue to make the music of Taken By Trees eagerly anticipated and swallowed whole upon arrival. Her new album, Other Worlds (due out October 2 on Secretly Canadian), was said to have been influenced by a recent trip to Hawaii, The Beach Boys and dub-step. Watch a preview of what’s to come below and catch Taken By Trees at the launch of Noisette, Noise Pop’s latest venture, August 4 at the Speakeasy Brewery.
Taken By Trees will perform Saturday, August 4 at the Speakeasy Brewery (1195 Evans Ave) in San Francisco as a part of Noisette – a food and music pairing brought to you by Noise Pop. Other bands include The Dodos, Pillowfight, & Craft Spells. Tickets range from $60-$85 (ouch!) and the event runs from 12-5pm.
Photos by Amanda Marsalis
