There is a twenty-two-year-old Swedish woman standing in front of a microphone in a studio in Stockholm, and she sounds like she has been doing this since Cream was still a band.
Elin Larsson’s voice is the whole argument. Blues Pills formed in 2011 with a lineup spread across Sweden, the United States, and France — guitarist Dorian Sorriaux grew up in Nancy, drummer Cory Berry came up through the American South, bassist Zack Anderson out of Wisconsin. They found each other through the internet and mutual obsession, which is a very 2011 way to form a band that sounds like it was assembled by a record collector in 1969.
Lady in Gold had not come out yet. This EP — four tracks, just under seventeen minutes — was the introduction.
The Session
Psychedelic Blues was recorded in Stockholm and produced by Don Alsterberg, who also handled the band’s debut full-length the following year. Alsterberg had the right instincts: keep it close, keep it warm, don’t over-produce what doesn’t need producing. The drums sit in the room like drums are supposed to sit in a room. The guitars have weight without being sludgy about it.
Berry’s drumming deserves its own sentence. He plays with a looseness that session players spend careers trying to fake — the kind of feel that comes from believing in the song rather than marking time through it.
Sorriaux runs his Les Paul through tones that reference Peter Green more than anyone writing in 2014 was willing to admit. There’s a moment in “Jupiter” where the guitar bends into a note that sounds genuinely mournful, not decorative. You notice it.
Four Songs That Feel Like a Full Record
The title track opens things and announces the band plainly: here is a groove, here is a voice, here is a band that has done their homework and then done something with it. “Little Sun” leans folk-psych, acoustic and unhurried, Larsson sounding almost conversational before the thing opens up. “Jupiter” is the centerpiece — six minutes, proper build, the kind of track that justifies the whole enterprise.
“Gone Too Long” closes it and lands like a closing track should: a little heavier than expected, Larsson pushing into the upper register without straining.
The EP format suits them. Nothing outstays its welcome, and you flip it over wanting more, which is the correct relationship to have with four songs from a band you’ve just met.
I’ll say it plainly: this is a better record than most full-lengths released that year. The influences are worn openly — Jefferson Airplane, early Fleetwood Mac, the bluesier end of late-sixties British rock — but Larsson’s voice isn’t a costume. She’s not performing an era. She means it, and you can hear the difference.
There is a specific pleasure in putting something like this on after a long day and letting the room change. Not complicated music. Not trying to be. Just four people in a studio getting something right.