Taken By Trees 'East Of Eden' (Rough Trade) Released 07/09/09

Victoria Bergsman is most broadly heard for lending the female vocal to the gazumping triumphs of Peter, Björn and John's single 'Young Folks' as well as her longer career with The Concretes. Taken By Trees have a more niche appeal with fans seduced by Taken By Trees 2007 debut 'Open Field', an album marked by hip, innocent and fresh-faced songs where Bergsman's sinuous voice rises above unclustered production.

For 'East Of Eden', Bergsman went looking for a travelling experience to an exotic distant land, intent on avoiding what she regards as the uncreative ambiance of the studio. She chose Pakistan for this. Now, given Pakistan needs a good pr exercise to offset negative media portrayal, Bergsman has captured the sense of exotic richness on 'East Of Eden' that lured her to Pakistan's cultural riches, those currents that gave rise to the Quawwali traditional of devotional songs of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen. Andreas Söderström's minimal guitar work accompanies along with local Pakistani musicians who played with Nusrat, add dyno-producer Dan Lissvik (of Swedish duo Studio) who pieced the project back in Sweden and we have an album pulsing with acoustic rhythm and percussive tabla beats.

A sense of the mysterious pervades, but the cover of Animal Collective's 'My Girls' is wickedly re-interpreted sans programming as 'My Boys' with handclaps, xylophone and a percussive pulse, while a classical guitar on 'To Lose Someone' is set to ancient beats and flute, and the mighty 'Tidens Gång' is delivered in Swedish with the weight of a melancholy traditional. Street sounds lend a sense of place on 'Anna' with an easy guitar, a devotional ditty from Bergsman and AC's Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) obliging on backing vocals, and 'Greyest Love Of All' has an optimism to beat off a doomed love. Meanwhile there's cross-cultural fertilisation afoot as Flamenco undercurrents inform 'Watch The Waves', the meditational 'Bekännelse' is washed in flute and a harmonium drone, and the indie-folk of the chipper 'Day By Day' choo choo's like a train.

'East Of Eden' is grand in conviction and execution that makes the average studio work a staid auld affair, the weakest moment coming when she gives way to the field vocals of 'Wapas Karna'. Given the difficulties that Bergsman experienced in Pakistan where her non-married status meant she was considered common property, Bergsman has delivered a cross-cultural coup that the ambassadorial Peter Gabriel and Real World Records would laud.