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At Long Last, First Aid Kit Returns With 'It's A Shame'

By Stephen Thompson
Published September 28, 2017 at 12:48 PM CDT

Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg got their start singing slight-but-pretty covers on YouTube, but their work as First Aid Kit has only grown deeper and richer as their careers have progressed. Stay Gold, from 2014, is particularly striking: a set of countrified folk songs whose dense, rich harmonies conceal compassionate observations and a set of sharp teeth.

The intervening years have had First Aid Kit touring, recording guest spots and releasing a prominent protest single. But the duo clearly has an album cooked up, if today's release of a new song called "It's a Shame" is any indication. It's a slick and billowy confection which, true to the M.O., applies layers of winsome charm to potent, melancholy insights about searching for an identity amid fleeting romance.

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Stephen Thompson
Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
See stories by Stephen Thompson