Stay Gold

With lyrics dripping with casual poetic nuance and bold, full arrangements, Stay Gold is at once an arresting set of classic country reference points as well as a towering body of stirring, beguilingly original songs.

With its innate sun-necked nature and social atmosphere, despite its throbbing introspection, Stay Gold is perfectly poised to knock you for six this summer.

Their Laurel Canyon harmonies still beguile, and Stay Gold strikes a wide, thick vein of polish and confidence.

Despite the changes in their compositional style, their growth, their pain and their heartbreak, First Aid Kit haven’t lost the key element that makes them so distinct.

Stay Gold should surely find itself in contention as one of the best albums of the year as 2014 draws to an end.

Luckily, the sweeter sound is in no way slick. It’s balanced against the bare ache in the singers’ voices, and the pained beauty in their tunes. The women’s voices have also matured.

The Soderbergs seize the day. [Jul 2014, p.91]

For all its timid trepidation, Stay Gold is an ambitious sounding record, full of massive hooks, and expansive arrangements.

Even if the arrangements can stray toward the vintage, the sisters' sublime voices ensure their songs always shine with startling clarity. [Jul 2014, p.107]

There doesn’t appear to be much room for hope, but they execute their sadness so beautifully that it’s easy to accept their blue moods.

With a genuine sense of melancholy that is far beyond their young years, the Söderbergs have taken the mild success of their sophomore record, Lion's Roar, in their stride, and with the expert hand of Bright Eyes' Mike Mogis once again producing, the lush harmonies and melodies of this album show that they are worthy of a place in the mainstream.

Ultimately, it's their sisterly harmonies--not their lyrical content--that provide the salve of this First Aid Kit.

Stay Gold features lush arrangements created by Nate Walcott and performed by members of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra. These layered sounds, so intricately woven to complement the sisters’ voices, create a completeness that realizes First Aid Kit’s musical maturity.

It’s a brief cloud over a lovely record that is the aural equivalent of lying down in a sunny meadow, located somewhere between Stockholm and Nashville.

As the album comes to a close with reflective ballad 'A Long Time Ago', it becomes apparent that Stay Gold isn't much of a departure from their previous outings. It is however, more consistent and ambitious--both thematically and sonically--than The Lion's Roar, allowing First Aid Kit to gather a well-deserved period of buoyant momentum, flourishing beyond an element of pastiche.

At times the sisters risk being bogged down by a certain two-dimensionality, but they prove there’s more to them than a sparkling glumness with ‘My Silver Lining.’

The result is an engaging, youthful and thoughtful folk-rock.

embracing experience in all its prickly incarnations might make for a tricky life but--on this evidence--the pay-off is the creation of ever more beautiful and emotionally engaging music. [Jul 2014, p.72]

As surefire a bet for bigger things as there’ll ever be, for the most part it’s a resounding success.

Three albums in, and their voices still chime like a Swedish Everly Brothers.

It’s a record confident in its own making, even more so when it turns its focus inward.

Every song on Stay Gold is beautifully crafted to feel like a new and complete soundscape--orchestrated strings, rolling drums and airy flutes enhance the Americana guitar riffs--bringing out the vivid imagery of their lyrics.

It’s darker than Roar, but also wiser, more mature in its conflicts.

Stay Gold is First Aid Kit's most lush and shimmering work to date. [No. 111, p.55]

For all the dusty byways covered on Stay Gold, First Aid Kit shows to be wise beyond their years.

Stay Gold was recorded in Omaha with Bright Eyes producer Mike Mogis, whose Big Sky echo and orchestrations complement sublime drifter poetry like "Waitress Song," where the harmonies tickle God.

Stay Gold, their third album, is less intimate than their previous effort, The Lion's Roar, but, backed by a 13-piece orchestra and gifted with a rare rapport and plangent voices, employed in close, modulated harmonies, the Söderbergs find their pitched balance in the melancholy and occasional loneliness of the quotidian.

It might be churlish to suggest that First Aid Kit introduce some rougher edges or explore some other musical avenues, when they’ve nailed what they do so exquisitely. However, over time they’ll have to if they're serious about taking the roads their heroes have travelled.

Production values may have been stepped up compared to its predecessors, but the album retains the same haunting charm.

The group often sounds more derivative than it does inspired, and clumsy lyrics don't help.

This is still a lovely, lovely record, on the surface at least; I'm not sure it'll stand up quite as well to heavy rotation as its predecessor.