Stockholm based songwriter Henrik Appel returned with third album Shadows. Ranging from freewheeling garage rock to intimate moments, and adding touches of jazz, Shadows is another step of his continued evolution as a songwriter and artist. Shadows is inspired by the likes of Bob Dylan’s Blond on Blonde and The Fall’s Hex Enduction Hour, to create a fully impressive album which finds Appel moving away from perfectionism, placing chief importance instead on making a raw, human record.

As on Humanity, Appel has co-written lyrics for Shadows with his long-term partner, Lind, marking them out as a Swedish answer to Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. “She washes, I dry,” is how Waits once described that particular songwriting partnership and it sounds as if Appel and Lind take a similar approach, mining their experiences in the life they share together in order to tap into common themes of both relationships to others and our relationships to ourselves. Enjoy Nothing to Lose from the record.

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