Akustisk by Nicklas Sørensen

Most can count on one hand—some can’t at all—the number of nights they’ve spent in the company of a true friend, when both beings find themselves utterly, simply transcendent. They are shot straight through with clear-eyed, mutual empathy, letting loose a litany of experience—be it grief, joy, misgiving, anticipation, or some of the myriad other sensations we humans are, for better or worse, saddled to endure. Rarer still is an album that seems effortlessly, to encompass that unspeakable range, and to answer immediately in kind.

The act of emotional evolution is dramatic, but the means need not be. Such is contained within Nicklas Sørensen’s “Akustisk,” which is instrumentally as humble as the title suggests. Here he weaves vignettes from the threads of sound he pulls from a 6-string guitar. His influences, guessed at as they are, seem simultaneously apparent and obscured—Jansch & Renbourn, Bull, Greenwood, and beyond—and he proves to be a deft and singular weaver.

Picture yourself once again on the porch, in the living room, at the favorite corner bar or park or museum haunt of your cherished and precious friend, the one whose presence ensured you that you are not alone after all—do the moments captured on this album not somehow resemble the face and the force of the person so dear to you and your readily beating heart?

It’s a strange thing, maybe, that I initially set the scene in the wild and time-devouring nighttime, as I also experience this album like I do the early morning, when the sun is coyly peeking over the horizon, when my mind is clear, and my body is as relaxed as it will ever be—but perhaps that’s because it’s then when my consciousness is tightly furled like a blossom waiting for a kiss from that old, reliable sun, sure to infuse me, just this one and fleeting time, with enduring peace.

-Jen Powers, April 2024

Library worker & guitar player.







Artist profile photo by Heidi Kristine Skovbjerg.