Swedish singer-songwriter Daniel Norgren has been releasing albums full of romantically-rendered Southern folk interpretations for European audiences. Wooh Dang, his sparse eighth album, sounds like you are slowly scrolling a radio dial across several AM stations, each broadcasting a field recording. Some are strange. Some are gorgeous. Some ache and some comfort. Some sound muffled and others are so intimately captured, it feels like Norgren is singing from inside your ear canal. Over ten songs, Norgren offers a survey course of sorts in 20th century American roots music: “Dandelion Time” is a Southern blues indebted to Howlin Wolf; “The Power” draws from Smokey Robinson’s pop balladry; “Let Love Run the Game,” the album’s shining centerpiece, is a finely-tuned classic soul pastiche by way of Muscle Shoals. There’s an innocence and intensity to Norgren’s reimagination of the American South, All of them, though, showcase the sound of an ambitious singer/songwriter at the height of his powers, plus the creaky feel of the 19th century farmhouse where Norgren and his friends recorded the album live to tape on analog gear.
Throughout Wooh Dang, Norgren proves himself unafraid of a sparse arrangement. Songs like “The Flow” and “The Day That’s Just Begun” revolve around his voice, with minimal accompaniment by piano, guitar feedback, yawning harmonica or the low hiss of the room.
And yet it’s “When I Hold You In My Arms”—a lush little ditty that floats like angels’ wings across a distinctly Latin rhythm—that might be the most instantly likeable moment on the album. It’s that stylistic diversity—and Norgren’s obvious skill and feel for most anything he tries—that really gives Wooh Dang that AM radio feel. With every turn of that invisible dial, another delight awaits you here.
Daniel Norgren – ’The Flow’ from the album “Wooh Dang” out April 19th on Superpuma Records
