Covers: Traditional Melodies of Dalarna, Sweden

The best whisky I ever tasted was in Sweden, full-throated and peaty with a honeyed thread of sweetness. Listening to Ian Carr playing these tunes from Dalarna, Sweden’s hot-bed of folk, reminded me of that first mouthful. Only someone who has a deep knowledge and passion for this music can play like this, not to mention the eye-twinkling elegance of such enviable fingerwork. Carr moved to Dalarna over 20 years ago, though these Swedish tunes and harmonies had long been part of his life as a member of the Anglo-Swedish band Swåp.

Now these fiddle tunes have escaped for a Saturday night out, with a ‘look-at-me’ glitz about them, an occasional melancholic tear brushed away, and a whole new lease of life. His alluring deep-throated Collings guitar sent him, Carr says, into realms of fantasy about the legendary Joseph Spence who would pick at his guitar on the hot sands of the Bahamas. Maybe Carr has produced something you might call a Bahamian Rhapsody: the ‘Barbro Pers Polska’ deliciously wrong-footing any potential dancer, the ‘Bingsjö-schottis’ with its knee-bent heavy-footedness, and the final track, Carr’s own composition, deftly transports Dalarna to ‘The Dales’.