GUNNEL DERNING – Inte bara mjukt och fint... (Liphone, 1979) / GUNNEL DERNING & MIKAEL LAMMGÅRD – Öppen (Liphone, 1982)

 
Inte bara mjukt och fint.... (Liphone, 1979)
Swedish vocals
International relevance: **

Gunnel Derning reminds me of some other singer but I can't remember which. There's a touch of
Stina Nordström here, but it's really not her I'm thinking of. Then again, it may be just anybody who owns too many Joan Baez records and listened to them all. Just add extra histrionics. Derning wallows in preciosity which quickly makes ”Inte bara mjukt och fint” hard to digest without any following health issues. Not that a better singer – with a less awkward phrasing – would have saved the album as most of the material is typical rosy-cheeked singer/songwriter fare with a Christian vibe. Not that I know if Derning was a Christian; given how it sounds, it's perhaps more likely she later started new age weekend courses with names like ”Get to know your inner mother owl” and ”How to offer your menstruation blood to the full moon for strength and vision”, only £250, sweat lodge included. ”Du talar ord” is a half-decent track, or at least would have been with a better singer and fewer session musicians pretending to be groovy, man.

By the way, isn't the album cover kind of creepy?

Öppen (Liphone, 1982)
Swedish vocals
International relevance: ** 

For Derning's second album, she teamed up with previous member of Hare Krishna band Rasa Mikael Lammgård who realizes Derning's every new age dream to the fullest. If you don't trust me, just look at the album cover. ”Öppen” is more progressive in its song structures, but amazingly enough, that only makes it worse. A couple of acoustic songs sound like leftovers from ”Inte bara mjukt och fint”, but plenty of tracks are soaked in 'spiritual' synthesizers and inner-mother-owl reverb. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, the track ”Kundalini” adds a rheumatic drum machine to the tablas, mock funk slap bass and fusion fuzz guitars. And if you thought it couldn't get any worse than that, check out the cheap synth horns on ”Mandala”...

I bet dealers will hype Gunnel Derning once they 'discover' her albums as "acid folk similar to Stenblomma" with a price tag equally deranged (unless they already have) but don't fall for any such delusive nonsense.

Inte bara mjukt och fint full album playlist
Öppen full album playlist