TUNES // Lina Tullgren – Golden Babyland

words by tommy

when i was growing up, my family had this sort of inexplicable machine that would melt down the wax of crayons for re-shaping and re-forming into crayon shaped molds. ostensibly the goal was to stimulate creativity in inventing and then creating new colors, but i always found a sort of satisfaction in perverting ready-made crayons into homemade ones, even as i mixed and saturated primaries into various shades, inevitably, of brown.

Lina Tullgren’s aching, gorgeous new song “Golden Babyland” finds more vibrant pigments and pictures in a structure that i find evokes this process. the song, even in its first line, conjures “melting legos,” and drapes an instrumental around Lina’s vocals which has the quality of color dripping slowly down the walls. maybe halfway through, the song starts to full-on melt — the skittering drums slow down, stop counting, while a guitar over on the left starts to wrap itself in noise until very suddenly, the refrain jump-cuts back into place.

there’s a tremendous but understated power in this closing moments of “Golden Babyland,” the click back into place. it sounds a bit like screwing your eyes up just to refocus them— finding presence and autonomy in, rather than despite, the increasing haziness of the world around you. Lina is at the height of their power here— shaping, destroying, and reforming sonic worlds around themself.

Lina Tullgren’s new album Free Cell will be released August 23rd on Captured Tracks. Pre-order is available here.