Sofia Talvik – Americana / Folk with Swedish Roots
Unmistakably Nordic in flavor, Sofia Talvik somehow still conforms to American interpretations of her own original music, a North Sea siren blending sparkle and melancholy, creating a special niche of folk music.
… Christmas single!
As every year, folks, I’m releasing a Christmas single for free on my website. The single will be released in December, but you can get it before everybody else by signing up on the newsletter. Just type in your email address in the box above and press enter and you’ll be able to download the single before the rest of the world! How bout that for a Christmas present! 😛
Last year I donated a song to HelpCureBreastcancer to help raise money for breast cancer research!
This year me and a couple of other artists each designed a t-shirt for Rosa Bandet and Modette.se to help raise money for the cause. The t-shirts will be auctioned out on tradera.se from tuesday onward, but you can get a peak of what my t-shirt looks like here. All the money from the auction will go to the research to find a cure to breast cancer.
Front and backside detail.
DN På Stan’s reporter Johan Åkesson interviewed me years ago before my fame and glory. Now we’ve met again in DN På Stan’s Pod Radio and I played a song live in the studio.
This is only in Swedish but you can listen to it here:
[audio:http://podradio.nu/download/32213_0.mp3]
So today I'm off to my old home town Gothenburg, to shoot the video for my upcoming single Mother's Way, Father's Way.
My very talanted friend Emelie Asplund is going to produce it. She's also the photographer that supplies me with beautiful press pics.
Here's a photo of me and Emelie when we were in the Phillippines last year (she's going to kill me when she finds out I've posted it here. 
)
Salvo Magazine appoints December their mp3 of the month in their upcoming issue. Read it first here!
MP3 of the Month
Sofia Talvik – DecemberIt’s not very often I come across Folk music that’s to my taste. Maybe it’s just a genre that doesn’t really do that much for me, I don’t know. Now, before all Folk artists out there get all defensive and start writing in complaining that I’m dissing them as a collective, please, save your venting, you couldn’t be further from the truth.
You see, although I’m not the biggest lover of Folk music in general, when it’s done properly, like pretty much any genre (especially Classical but that’s a totally different story), it can be stunning.
Look at artists like Gemma Hayes, Kathryn Williams, Nick Drake, Tom McRae or Cara Dillon, with the latter especially being truly sublime. Folk absolutely is a genre that’s both under appreciated whilst also being a backbone to music as a whole and one we must all embrace ‘for the greater good’.
That’s what leads me onto Sofia. We decided to choose December as our MP3 of the month above all other tracks off her most recent long playing effort Street of Dreams as it would be too easy to choose the single It’s Just Love based on the facts that 1 – it’s a single already and 2 – it’s a duet with one of my personal heroes, Bernard Butler, now, that would bias the vote ten fold.
No, what sets December apart from the bunch is that it’s just so much more delicate than the others.With a vocal range tinged by echoes of Dolores Mary O'Riordan Burton from the Cranberries blended with a light heartedness that in some ways isn’t too distant from Joni Mitchell in her heyday all those years ago, December has managed to remain on constant replay for a good while now and will continue to do so until another track off the album takes our fancy.
Featuring an accent that does at times sound Irish it’s almost unnoticeable that she is in fact from Sweden. Don’t worry. We’ll keep the Abba references to a minimum.Sofia has obviously been working as a solo artist for long enough now to realise where she wants to get, it’s abundantly clear that she’s working with people who are on her wavelength and are helping her do that
If there was ever a time for artists like Sofia to be in the forefront it’s got to be now, we’ve got others Acoustic Soloists like James Morrison and Blunt pushing acoustic based song writing into the mainstream and whilst we really shouldn’t pin all of our hopes on artists like these, god help us if we did, it is great to see that every now and then artists like Sofia do get the spotlight shone in their direction. 2007 should be the year that spotlight gets turned to face her and we wish her all the best when it does.
I am also green with envy that she’s worked with a hero, but I’ll get over that so don’t worry too much..
www.myspace.com/sofiatalvik
Duncan Buchanan