It was as a member of Loosegoats, a cult band in the alt-country movement of the ‘90s, that the name Christian Kjellvander first started to become known. After the Swedish – though their hearts were firmly planted in the vast South-western American plains – quartet broke up, Kjellvander initiated a solo career that would turn out to be quite fertile. Since his debut, Songs From a Two-Room Chapel (Startracks, 2002), he has already released ten full-length albums, revealing a deep-voiced troubadour as concerned by the misadventures of the heart as he is by those that plague humanity. His emotional authenticity serves as the connecting point between our most intimate desires and the grandiose power of nature. The culmination, so far, of this trajectory has been the sublime Hold Your Love Still (Tapete, 2023), a record that showed better than ever before the diversity included in Kjellvander’s rich palette of inspirational resources. Above all, all through his work, the Swede has been an evocative storyteller in the very best tradition of Leonard Cohen: whether cynically dismantling capitalist culture (Disgust For The Poor), in singer/songwriter love song mode (Terns Took Turns), or even freely using for analogy material some geographical references of a youth that was very connected to the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal, Cultural Spain), each of his songs is always delivered with the same subtle passion, turning his artistic canon into a true travel map, be they literal or figurative. But always leaving a mark. — Amplificasom