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Us and Them — The Lights and the Shadow
(Fruits de Mer Friends of the Fish 88, 2025, LP)

by Henry Schneider, Published 2025-12-11

The Lights and the Shadow Cover art

It is has been three years since the last Us and Them studio album ...And I Observed the Blue Sky, but they haven’t been idle. In the interim they’ve released two singles and Britt provided her signature vocals on the recent Himmelaya album Lost Horizon. While recording their new album, The Lights and the Shadow, Britt and Anders found themselves pulled in two opposite directions, partly towards the pastoral and idyllic (e.g., “View from Sky Road”) and partly towards darker realms (e.g., “Me and the Ones Before Me”), the result being an album that describes the different sides of life — the light that is at the starting point and the shadow that is always there. In addition to Britt and Anders, they enlisted the help from Per Lindblom (keyboards on “Around the Maypole (Once Again)”), Dag Strömberg (flute on “Get in the Swing” and “Me and the Ones Before Me”), and Elénore Fauré and Ingrid Gullbring (vocals on “Tear Apart”). In addition to Britt’s lead vocals, there are lovely harmonies as well as an atmosphere of 70s melancholic gothic cinema. One interesting observation is the apparent influence of another Fruits de Mer band, the Soft Hearted Scientists, on “Us and Them.” Similar rhythms and rhyming greatly lighten the mood. Songs that stand out for me include the dark sombre track “Me and the Ones Before Me,” the mysterious “Things Obvious to Other People,” and the sinister “I Was a Wayward Child.” All in all, The Lights and the Shadow is a lovely album that showcases a mature and broader sound for this Swedish acid folk duo.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Us and Them

More info
http://usandthem2.bandcamp.com/album/the-lights-and-the-shadow-album

 

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