Seeing First Aid Kit in Toronto

Last week Rachelle and I went to see First Aid Kit perform at the Great Hall on Queen Street. The opening act was a trio from England called Peggy Sue. The lead singer had frizzed-out, slightly hung-over hair and a mildly bored manner about her.

The other guitarist, who resembled a shorter, plumper version of Amy Winehouse, looked like the sarcastic one in high school. Filling out the trio was a bearded hipster, who played the drums in the background.

Pared down, they played the sort of music you’d imagine listening to as you drove across America getting a tattoo in each state. But then, springing from the percussive spine of their sound, the music would take jangled, angry flight, as if tacked on to suggest an emotional and unpredictable complexity beating within. In short order it became predictable and I began to feel old, imagining the lives of the performers in 15 years. Would the lead singer have named her daughter Peggy Sue, and now a schoolteacher, surprise her students by knocking a song out of the park at a Christmas assembly?

First Aid Kit took the stage to the enthusiastic applause of the 500 or so people who were there. The band is comprised of two Swedish sisters, Johanna and Klara Soderberg. They’re young and beautiful.

Johanna, the older of the two, is tall and thin and dresses like a pioneer. Klara, the propulsive force of the band, is broader in stature, sporting candid black banks and introspective, watchful eyes. There’s something spooky sweet about them, and they have gorgeous, mesmerizing voices, so pure as to feel like the girls are antennas that pick up divine currents inaccessible to the rest of us.

They became “stars” four years ago (when they were just 18 and 15) after they posted a song that they covered by Fleet Foxes on YouTube. By far, it’s been the most successful thing that they’ve ever done, proving much more popular than any of the more polished or managed material that’s followed. Unlike this video, which felt incredibly sincere and intimate, the girls seemed like they were playing roles on stage, that they were being handled by people who had told them that they knew what it took to “make it” in the music biz.  It was a little bit demoralizing, actually.

Seeming still so young and optimistic, the show sometimes had the feel of attending a Christian campfire sing-a-long. They just didn’t own the experience of their songs, and they seemed at their best covering material written by others. Watching, I longed for them to return to their unselfconscious states when they were at their most beautiful best– as perhaps we all were– before we knew who we were to become and before people started telling us how best to get there. I wanted to return to the past and stumble upon their video afresh—delighting in the potential of two unexpected and radiant girls, mysterious wonders of nature, singing as if for their pleasure alone.

Fleet Foxes – Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (Cover) – YouTube