Ellen Arkbro & Johan Graden - I get along without you very well

The Quietus

Those familiar with Ellen Arkbro’s previous work might be forgiven for registering some surprise at her latest effort – an album that eschews the purist harmonic studies of for brass and organ and chords in favour of, well, actual songs. On the surface, the shift is somewhat of a curveball. Yet hidden within the album’s eight succinct tracks, traces of her prior character remain, a distinctive approach to working with her core sonic materials that grows more apparent with every listen.

Arkbro, and collaborator Johan Graden – a Swedish multi-instrumentalist last seen on Vilhelm Bromander’s excellent aurora early this year – walk a fine line between the glacial pop of Mazzy Star and a far more mediative, far more interesting, exploration of compositional restraint. Meandering, improvisatory, drawn out to the extreme, I get along without you very well is an album abundantly confident doing nothing, wistfully throwing up a handful of ideas and letting them float in the breeze, employing the faintest of structures to lure them back to earth. 

Percussion, clarinet, organ, and brass combine to form rich, dirge-like walls of sound – an unusual combination made all the more obtuse for its habit of letting several instruments share near identical parts, with only their cautious harmonic development left to pry one voice from another. Anti-melodies drift effortlessly from place to place, the vocals – sometimes singing, sometimes merely humming in the distance – hovering loosely, lethargically above a dense and fragile bed. 

Opener ‘Close’ channels a doomy, droning spirit, with Arkbro’s voice jostling against the lightest wisps of the clarinet, a delicate, temperate tuba pining from the hallway of another room entirely. Tracks like ‘Never Near’ or ‘Temple’ succeed precisely because they go nowhere, concerned as they are more with the constant and subtle reframing of long-held tones than with trying to mimic the song-structure proper. Not simply a collection of discreet tunes, however, the whole affair seems designed to build towards its narrative pedestal: the penultimate ‘Love you, bye’, a track that begins with a sparse organ refrain before slowly developing into a mesmerising wash of complex brass chords and pensive, Badalamenti rhythms. 

It is perhaps of no surprise that Arkbro and Graden are at their best when courting the more experimental fringes of their sound world. The occasional focus on piano and vocals in tracks like ‘Out of luck’ seems oddly misplaced, treading some fairly well-worn singer-songwriter ground in a manner at odds with an album that doesn’t so much challenge the traditional song construct, as smash it with a very melancholic hammer. This is but a small complaint. I get along without you very well is a fascinating album, a work that utilises its composers’ achievements at producing classical music – not least their clear mastery of harmony – to construct a unique and surprising take on the pop adjacent format.

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The Free Jazz Collective 0

By Matty Bannond

No clutter. No clamor. No chaos. Instead, music that generates a glassy and reflective calm-lake surface. The eight short tracks on I get along without you very well present stripped-down compositions and scaled-back instrumentation with breathtaking purity. Within such featherweight musical structures, every note and syllable cleanly lands a heavyweight blow on the listener.

Ellen Arkbro and Johan Graden are two Swedish composers and multi-instrumentalists who collaborated on For Organ and Brass in 2017 (reviewed on this site here). That album explored languid, long-tone soundscapes. This latest joint-effort features pop-adjacent songs that faintly recall Sigur Rós, but with an experimental edge that emerges from the album’s rich aural austerity.

Several tracks open with Arkbro’s voice present on the very first beat. “Closer” is one example. Two bass clarinets create a droning backdrop until organ and synth stealthily join the push. Percussion enters too. The song expands like a slow-drawn breath. The husky production and razor-sharp vocal combine to shoot tingling sensations down the listener’s neck and spine.

Trombone and tuba are the only instruments alongside the lyrics on “Temple”. The viscous stream of brassy long-tones erects a solid platform for Arkbro’s abstracted, distracted humming. On “Love you, bye”, Graden contributes organ chords recorded separately at Sankt Jacobs kyrka (Saint James's Church) in Stockholm. The track marks a rare moment when the album fleshes out its bare-bones aesthetic, with the instruments finally howling their pain and pleasure.

Arkbro and Graden’s album is characterized by an absence of density and volume. The result is a unencumbered, disrobed record where nothing is superfluous and everything vibrates with truth. I get along without you very well gets along very well without heavy paraphernalia and crowded sonic spaces. And if absence makes the heart grow fonder, this is truly an album to love and cherish.

The album is available via streaming, digital download and on CD here, with limited edition vinyl on offer in black and light-blue.