Image Journal (USA) review;

We Sprout in Thy Soil, the first full-length album from Swedish folk singer David Åhlén, features ten ethereally beautiful, stripped-down hymns. A Baptist pastors son based in the working-class Stockholm suburb of Bagarmossen, Åhlén describes his influences as everything I listened to as a child, which happens to range from the chorales of Palestrina to the shoegazer rock of My Bloody Valentine. The instrumentation is hushed, focusing mainly on Åhléns achingly sincere vocals and psalm-like lyrics. Åhléns voice can be ardently wide-ranging, dropping octaves then regaining height in repeated hallelujahs. He wrote every song on the album (except for Arise, which quotes Song of Songs), and his lyrics combine a world-weary yearning with quiet joy in God: In His arms, yes in His arms I fell / Beauty and silence / Eyes of hope, those bleeding eyes / He brings me rest, he sings in a strong falsetto reminiscent of Bon Iver on the track Rose of Sharon. The intimate sense of I and Thou is never interrupted by the subtle additions of a moody spinet, a cello, and backup vocals from the Uppsala Boys Choir and Emil Svanängen of Loney, Dear on various tracks. Åhléns music moves past both the relentless major-key positivity of mainstream CCM and the cryptic gestures towards God that occasionally crop up in the mainstream indie sceneit both worships and wonders, expressing the hope of faith in God without excluding its mystery. Strange, this could be the answer / Beginning and ending, the essence of time, he muses in Ocean, then follows this with instructive in Whisper His Name: In the darkness / In your void and shame / Whisper His precious name... He will answer. These are songs for the prayer closet, not the public square; but their intimacy and simplicity makes them both timely and timeless, modern psalms that the public should hear.