Listening to Children Of The Sün is like stepping back in time, to the end of the 60's in the middle of the hippie wave. Flower Power, colorful VW, love and not war. The United States is stuck in the Vietnamese jungle and Woodstock is the sounding board of a cultural revolution. To listen to Children Of The Sün, it is thus also to travel, on the side of California and San Francisco more precisely.
Yet the band is not American but Swedish. This can be heard by this typically Scandinavian insolent mastery that they do not fail to unpack. A geographical origin which does not really surprise since this cold land has been for a long time the cradle of a whole seventies revival, embodied by Witchcraft, Spiritual Beggars, Graveyard or Blues Pills. In fact, the only originality that Children Of The Sün can show is in its almost entirely female cast. For the rest, nothing but the known, as much in the clothing as in a warm and rhythmic music with blues and folk accents.
But in a style where the sunny energy prevails anyway over the audacity, the Swedes knew from the start how to melt the heart of the nostalgic music lovers of the 70's thanks to a nice first album ("Flowers") and whose success is today confirmed by this healing "Roots" which simply feels good. Like a bath of positive waves in which we soak with a delicious delight. This second album resumes where its predecessor left off almost three years ago.
From the beginning, the band makes us feel good with a tender and powerful 'Reflection' that is propelled by Josefina Berglund Ekholm's incandescent voice. Sometimes she hardens the tone by roaring a bit like her compatriot Elin Larsson (Blues Pills) and thus their muse Janis Joplin. Within a whole always so soft and sometimes enriched with Gospel tints ('Blood Boils Hot', 'The Soul') reveals a new appetite for slightly harder features, more hard than rock, as illustrated by a stirring 'Gaslightning'.
Nevertheless, Children Of The Sün remains faithful to an often delicate expression, hemmed with a soft melancholy (the skeletal 'Man In The Moon') and always warm. The songs are full of instruments as discreet as they are silky, which weave the soft and percussive cocoon in which Josefina's dazzling voice can unfold, rich with a multitude of nuances. Coupled with finely chiseled writing, these vocals carry everything away, witness in particular this irresistible 'Leaves' that they lead in a forest and energetic trail with poetic vigor.
"Roots" shows that Children Of Sün knew how to pass the stage of the second album with flying colors, delivering a strong rock but always tasty which wanders with serenity between a folk and a blues of another time.