Our Broken Garden - Blind (2023)

Epitomising triumph over adversity, the first Our Broken Garden album since 2010 not only embarks on a newly minted sound – a gloriously warm and nuanced brand of slowburning Scandinavian soul - but Danish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Anna Brønsted has dug deep to provide an emotional tour de force that shines as a beacon of resilience, resistance and perseverance. Welcome to Blind. Blind’s musical DNA is warmer, more inviting and even poppier than previous album, The Golden Sea: Brønsted suggests that it’s down to Blind’s backing tracks being recorded live (as opposed to Golden Sea’s layered production), but also that she was particularly taken with ‘70s singer-songwriters (she namechecks Neil Young, Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell) and contemporary R&B, especially FKA Twigs. And it’s that intimacy, and candour, which also makes Blind sound that much warmer and inviting. Brønsted’s life was on the line, and her creative response has thrown her a lifeline. As she prepares to play the first Our Broken Garden shows in ten years, the darkness of her recent past recedes further, but she is sanguine about the present.