London-based Swedish singer-songwriter Josefin Öhrn (previously of Grammy-nominated Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation) is set to release her debut album Cherry on 25 September, featuring vocals from Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream) and Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre), with guitar from Andy Bell (Ride). Josefin’s most intimate and self-defined album yet, Cherry explores themes of fresh starts, desire, love and grief. It taps into a new and very interesting phase of music, seen on recent releases from Robyn (Sexistential) and Lykke Li (The Afterparty), where the experiences of women are put out there without shame in colourful candidness. Such records tap into a fascinating period of raw, intense and highly transformative self-actualization. Josefin wrote the songs on Cherry during a new phase of her life. It captures the sense of liberty, excitement and vulnerability that comes with such a re-birth, explored with an intensity that’s sensual, vulnerable and unguarded. At its core lies the female gaze – not as a concept, but a lived experience, with a sense of longing running through the album like a pulse: a longing for connection, for freedom. Musically, Cherry has echoes of the hypnotic psych-rock of Josefin’s previous band Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation, but the arrangements, structures and mixing are less avant-garde and closer to the laid-back atmospheres of Kurt Vile, Lana Del Rey and Natalie Bergman, with clear hooks and Josefin’s voice standing front and centre – intimate, magnetic, unwavering – allowing for the album’s stark emotional immediacy. Josefin personally asked Kalle Jerneholm Gustavsson (The Soundtrack of Our Lives), who she had worked with previously, to produce the album. “We recorded it in his studio, Svenska Grammofonstudion, Gothenburg. It’s an amazing studio where artists can stay, so I was totally living the album, breathing music every waking and sleeping hour as I was far away from my everyday life in London,” explains Josefin. “It was a beautiful experience.”
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