ALBUM // Lina Tullgren – Free Cell
Post by Tommy
Listening to Lina Tullgren’s Free Cell at times feels like picking up a smooth rock at the beach and bouncing it in your hand to feel its weight, letting your palm fold slightly under its weight as it lands. Out now on Captured Tracks, the album poses itself in the posture one might, holding the rock — nervous yet loose, privately fidgeting close to the hip. It’s made up of moments with all the gravity to slice through the air but with all the grace and feeling to land it softly.
In carrying its weight, the album eschews a traditional noise rock dynamic (distortion off -> distortion on) in favor of a sense of idiosyncratic, gnarled composition owing as much to classical sensibilities as to pop and rock. Tullgren backlights moments of intensity in a variety of novel ways throughout the album. Sometimes a chord will crowd itself into a dissonant cluster, or the band will snag on a line and repeat like a skipping record. In “Golden Babyland,” the song hushes in the presence of a distorted guitar. In “Nervous Yet,” the distortion rumbles and hovers in the background. Other times grammatical and structural idiosyncrasies in the lyrics find a dissonance in disembodying themselves (ie, the cryptic, bizarre, and ultimately moving “water / and it is thinking more / about the one you were / adored.”)
Many of the lyrics here are private, positioned head-down. “went to the party / i just sit on the back stairs” they sing. Then, “i’ll stay on my phone where i am safe from thought”. There are moments of privacy, but the lyrics also flutter around subjects of intimacy and touch. Throughout 12 tracks there are absent others, there are others who still were never “really here,” and there are others, unseen in the songs, but spoken to in the lyrics.
Two of the album’s most affecting lyrics are commands to another: in “Soft Glove 1” (and “2”) Tullgren pleads for silent intimacy, saying “please take my memories they’re free / don’t ask me” and then in “Wow, Lucky” commands “sleep now / do i have to show you how.” Both times, they cry out for silence. In fact, in most cases knotted moments resolve or untangle themselves into a state of quiet — that’s the hand loosening itself to break the stone’s fall. Tullgren and their band consistently, throughout Free Cell, resist the urge or the common tendency to harden during these moments, instead offering a commitment to feel each feeling fully, in stillness.
It’s a practice in gently gripping the load of difficult moments and heavy feelings. Sensing the weight of it and softening yourself to collapse just slightly for it. Finding bravery and power in repose. “have you seen pyramids” they sing. “do you know just how strong it is just to be sitting here / to be yourself / to read now”
Buy Free Cell here via Captured Tracks.