SWEDE SOUNDS
Songwriter seeks catharsis
For much of 2010, the city of Malmö, Sweden, was terrorized by a sniper who targeted immigrants. A man was eventually sentenced for the murder of two people and the attempted murder of another five.
Sarah MacDougall, a Swedish-Canadian musician, was visiting the city — her hometown — while the sniper was on the loose. She recounts the experience on I Want to See the Light (Lost From Our Eyes), a deceptively gorgeous track reverberating with springy synth bubbles, carefree guitar strums, and MacDougall’s fragile yet hearty vocals.
At first, you might think she’s singing about the joys of solitary walks (“I take the long way home, I want to see the night”) until she gets to the third verse and shatters your reality. “Did you hear the news today? There’s a killer on the loose. He’s only shooting dark-haired people, could be aiming right at you,” the dark-haired singer warns.
MacDougall, who now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, ponders the lows and highs of Sweden on her album Grand Canyon, an assortment of spacious folk-pop tunes awash with wistful strings, subtle electronics and snappy percussion. Malmö I mitt hjärta, which she sings in her mother tongue, is an ode to the southern Swedish city.
“The song is about catharsis and letting go about the things that were hard and dark about the city,” says MacDougall, the daughter of a Canadian father and Swedish mother.
“Malmö is very much a ghettoized city. It has a lot of immigration and racism. It’s also very scary sometimes because it’s very quiet at the same time — a lot of things happen behind closed doors. I guess the song is kind of just about forgiving (Malmö) for all those things.”
Two of her songs, Devil’s Gap and The Story of Pippi and Lionheart, are inspired by some of Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren’s most famous characters. Like many young girls, MacDougall remembers putting pipe cleaners in her braids to emulate Pippi Longstocking’s unique style.
“I think Astrid Lindgren was an incredible children’s storyteller. She had a lot of strong female characters in her books and she was also always making her heroes rebels, and I could always relate to that.”
At 18, she rebelled by leaving Sweden and moving to Australia, and then Vancouver, for school. She eventually headed north to write songs in a Yukon cabin and never left. She has since won two Western Canadian Music Awards — The Greatest Ones Alive was named solo roots album of the year in 2012, while Grand Canyon received the same honour last year. She was also nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award in 2015 and performed during its three days of showcases.
The song is about catharsis and letting go about the things that were hard and dark about the city.”