James Yorkston Impresses with Brilliant Swedish Singers » PopMatters

James Yorkston hits new heights of organic wistfulness and melancholy with the aid of ex-Cardigans singer Nina Persson and First Aid Kit’s Johanna Söderberg.

Songs for Nina and Johanna James Yorkston Domino 22 August 2025

A prolific recording artist since 2002, James Yorkston has once again found a new way of presenting his poetic songs. This is to add to his already lengthy list of collaborations that have taken in everyone from the Athletes and the Fence Collective to the Big Eyes Family Players, Kathryn Williams, Jon Thorne, and Suhail Yusuf Khan. The self-styled “low-rung sangster from the East Neuk o’ Fife, Scotland” has also, you could say, found a new opportunity to escape the “folk” tag that’s continued to dog him ever since he once (or twice) recorded an album of traditional songs, worked with the Watersons, and – as an acoustic-guitar player of some renown – supported Bert Jansch on tour.

Yorkston is working once more with soft-voiced ex-Cardigans frontwoman Nina Persson – following on from 2023’s highly acclaimed The Great White Sea Eagle. He’s also recording with Swedish DIY collective the Second Hand Orchestra in Stockholm again, as he did for his previous two albums. On this new project, though, he’s adding to the mix the pure voice of Johanna Söderberg of First Aid Kit. She’s agreed to be his Emmylou on four of the ten sensitive and heartfelt songs on Songs for Nina and Johanna.

With such a combination of talent, then, how could Yorkston possibly go wrong? Well, essentially, he doesn’t. He is, after all, heading up what might conceivably be called a Scottish/Scandinavian supergroup, with all members playing a distinctive role in making music that turns out to be full of intimate charm, wit, and candor. Yorkston’s the songsmith with the wilting voice and the acoustic guitar.

The bemused storyteller is stocked with wry and honest tales of finding love and losing love. He’s the old warhorse who’s experienced all the highs and lows of romantic relationships. The roving musician on the road, playing gigs in old churches, hanging in cafés, recording live sessions, drinking from his flask, birdwatching, bumping into old flames, and just being weighed down by the whole unbearable impermanence of things.

Persson and Söderberg, meanwhile, play the part of intensifying his songs with emotional clarity and open expression, sometimes leading on vocals, sometimes in harmony with Yorkston, and sometimes just old-fashioned duetting with him. That’s why Daniel Bengtson, producer and multi-instrumentalist for a thousand Swedish acts over the years (including First Aid Kit on 2022’s Palomino), co-produces and plays supremely melodic bass. Not to forget Peter Morén – of Peter Bjorn and John, and, currently, SunYears – who takes his place on 12-string electric guitar within the Second Hand Orchestra. He’s there, indeed, amongst a colorful array of omnichord, pump-organ, bass-clarinet, and vibraphone specialists.

Yorkston presides over a star-studded ensemble like never before on Songs for Nina and Johanna, then. However, it’s fair to say that his new tunes constitute no radical departure from the Yorkston records – and his persona – of old. The main man isn’t about to win a new generation of fans and start competing with Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, and Drake at the top of the Spotify chart, even if that beloved streaming service is also, of course, Swedish.

Instead, he harks back, in his understated way, to lovelorn tracks like “I Awoke” and “Year of the Leopard” from 2006, on which he memorably sang with the enigmatic Jenny Gordon (AKA HMS Ginafore). Now, though, he allows his female singing partners to take center stage and sideline his warm yet undoubtedly reedy vocals. Embracing “the chance to sing with two great Swedish voices”, he explains, “I tried not to get in their way, tried to give them space to interpret the songs as they felt.”

So it is that Persson and Söderberg do their thing with quiet intensity on a collection of finely crafted three-to-four-minute songs that, while regrettably leaving no room for the eccentric spoken-word pieces that Yorkston always excelled at (like “Woozy with Cider” and “My Mouth Ain’t No Bible”), never outstay their welcome. That’s especially when Yorkston and the band accompany the singers with daring instrumentation and surprising solos as only they can.

It all comes together on “A Moment Longer” and “Love /Luck”. It’s no surprise that these are the first singles off Songs for Nina and Johanna, serving as bold statements of the two Swedish singers’ vocal prowess. In the former, while Yorkston frets about cultivating newfound love in a time of profound uncertainty, Persson is a wonderfully brooding and forlorn presence. “Don’t hurry so to catch me,” she warns, “For I’ve no idea where I’m going.” She finds sympathetic company in Yorkston’s delicate fingerpicking, Bengtson’s lugubrious bass, and a mournful five-string violin solo from Ullis Gyllenberg, before joining her male counterpart on the most tender of hopeful lines. “And here’s a flask of something warm to share / To take the chill away / And there’s a lifetime of stories here / To chase the blues, chase the blues away.”

Söderberg is somewhat sunnier on “Love / Luck”, a catchier and more upbeat song – just the right side of twee – concerning the remembered feelings of excitement and bafflement that come from discovering a romantic connection. The effortless beauty of her voice makes her the perfect partner to Yorkston on the “this is just love/luck” chorus and the “this is a fire that I recognize” refrain. She also, however, has the air of melancholy required of Yorkston to express the inevitable suspicion and doubt at the heart of the track. Look past the exuberant saxophone solo and there it is in her reading of the line: “But the days are all tiny fragile dolls / Who threaten to fall apart if we look too close.”

It’s perhaps the more overtly desolate numbers on the album, however, that are the most striking. Opener “I Can Change” is a huge sigh of a breakup song, built on an intricate Yorkston guitar pattern and a sad mandolin riff, and filled with the haunting power of Persson’s voice. “Oh, what is it you do not see in me?” Nina calls out, before pleading desperately, “I can change, let me change.” It’s the intimacy of the situation that gets you, but then there’s “Rabbit”, even more stark. It has Yorkston and Persson depicting the dying embers of a relationship to the mournful sound of piano and violin, and it’s the grim realism of the situation that gets you. When “it’s coffee for breakfast / And you really need to be somewhere.”

The sprightly ensemble numbers work a treat as well, though. “Oh Light, Oh Light” is the sound of an ensemble clearly having a great time (on a Swedish porch?), with Yorkston celebrating a “newfound glee in me” and Söderberg egging him on in unusually lairy mode. “Love That Tree”, too, is pleasingly full of bile and raucousness as we find Yorkston squaring up to post-break-up hangups and recriminations, especially with regard to an ex that he bumps into in London. “You pop up like some candle flame / And you asked me how I felt I would feel to have the friend I loved the best / To push me away like all the rest”. Persson gamely takes up the position of his ex – or exes – and it’s tremendous fun.

Yet, while his two female stars certainly elevate his songs, Yorkston shows that he can still kick it on his own as a singer with his distinguished group. “Where’s the Time?” is evidence of that, on which he delivers one of his most touching vocals to a lovely Byrdsy jangle – courtesy of Morén on the 12-string – and a stirring arrangement of violin, drums, saxophone, and simulated wind instruments.

In truth, there’s a remarkable range of tracks on offer on Songs, an album that yields rich rewards – gradually, and with repeated listening. It’s a heck of a journey, indeed, merely from earnest ballad “Oh Sparrow, Up Yours” to the foul-mouthed and splenetic “I Spooked the Neighbours”. Travelling with James Yorkston, Persson, Söderberg, and all their friends, though, it’s a journey entirely devoid of cliché, full of adventure, and impossible to tire of.