Limelight
Scandinavian pair tap into British folk horror for a spooky but intimate experience.
SWEDISH DUO US And Them do a wonderful line in folkish beauty undercut with a generous helping of foreboding. It’s no surprise, then, to discover that they’re big fans of The Wicker Man. The twosome recently released a new anthology of their work via the gloriously fecund Surrey-based Fruits De Mer label, including covers of two songs from the British folk horror classic, starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee.
“We saw the movie and we were like,‘Wow!’” enthuses singer Britt Rönnholm, who makes Willow’s Song her own.“The songs in that movie simply blew us away.”
“The thing that is so scary about that movie is that you can go to a place and everyone seems to like you, and then you discover that they have a [sinister] plan for you,” adds her musical partner Anders Håkansson, chillingly.
Us And Them have been releasing music through Fruits De Mer since 2009, though the label decided now would be a good time to give their gorgeous proggy acid folk a little extra push with An Introduction To Us And Them, which comes a good few years into a sumptuous career that hasn’t always been as appreciated as it deserves to be. The 16-song collection includes a number of self-composed tracks, plus Sandy Denny and Pink Floyd covers.
Opening the album is Julia Dream Of All The Pretty Little Horses, a musical portmanteau of the 1968 Floyd B-side attributed to Roger Waters and the traditional US lullaby. Prog guesses Pink Floyd are a key influence, given that song and the name of the group.
“The strange thing is, I wasn’t really thinking of the song [from The Dark Side Of The Moon] when I named us,”says Håkansson. He and Rönnholm met in Stockholm in 2001 where the
