First Aid Kit play celebratory show in St. Paul

L to R: Johanna Söderberg, Gabriel Runemark and Klara Söderberg of First Aid Kit performing at the Palace Theatre in St. Paul on Sunday, July 23, 2023.Sara Fish for MPR

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July 24, 2023

Long before the opening act Sunday night, fans stood shoulder to shoulder on the Palace Theatre floor, angling for the best possible view of the stage. Their eager anticipation was for Swedish folk-pop act First Aid Kit’s first Twin Cities show since a 2018 stop at the Palace. Throughout their 90-minute set, the sister duo of Klara and Johanna Söderberg employed their signature harmonies and evocative lyricism to offer a celebratory evening of light, love, and beauty.

Before First Aid Kit began, opener the Weather Station kicked off the evening with a relatively subdued, measured flow of folk rock. Clad in a two-piece Canadian tuxedo, lead singer Tamara Lindeman interspersed her set with tracks off of both the critically-acclaimed 2021 release Ignorance and 2022’s How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars. Alternating her vocals between a floating, breathy falsetto and a clear, resonant tone, Lindeman explored personal themes of isolation, conflict, love, and the state of the world around her. At times, however, her voice seemed lost in the theater, causing some of the lyrics to be difficult to make out. Regardless, the emotional tenor of the band’s music remained, powered in particular by the melancholic clarinet and saxophone work of multi-instrumentalist Karen Ng. As her 30-minute set drew to a close, Lindeman thanked First Aid Kit for inviting the band on tour and promised to see the St. Paul crowd soon.

A woman sings into a microphone while performing onstage — Tamara Lindeman of The Weather Station performing at the Palace Theatre in St. Paul on Sunday, July 23, 2023.
Sara Fish for MPR

First Aid Kit’s stop came in support of their fifth album, 2022’s Palomino. The album marked a bit of a recalibration for the band. After the 2018 breakup album, Ruins, Palomino is lighter, fresher, and more focused on self-acceptance in times of hardship. By incorporating an upbeat, pop-forward tone and uplifting message, Palomino feels like the natural evolution following emotional hardship, where the artists can now find joy on the other side of their pain.

What did this reset look live? Raucous, echoing cheers arose immediately for the headliner as soon as the house lights went down, and the sisters walked out on stage dressed in coordinating red, white, and blue dresses. Opening with Palomino’s anthemic title track, the band’s commanding drums and glittery guitar immediately conjured classic Americana imagery of vast country spaces, endless highways, and wide-open skies. If the country sentiment wasn’t made clear in the music itself, the band was physically backdropped by pastoral visuals of shimmering lakes, waving wheatfields, and flying birds. This bright, expansive start to the show set the tone for the evening.

The band’s sound was constantly changing throughout the set, shifting from pensive pop balladry to breezy country, light folk-pop to driving rock, often within the same song. Younger sister Klara sang lead throughout the majority of the set, applying a distinctive twang to her voice as she let it soar throughout the theater. Johanna, accompanying on bass, jumped in on supporting vocals. When they sang together, the pair knit together harmonies so intertwined they seemed to create an entirely new single voice. Johanna’s softer vocals rounded out Klara’s powerful twang, bringing a lightness that buoyed the two as one. Even as they sang in harmony, their voices were clean, bold, and powerful.

A woman sings and plays guitar onstage — Klara Söderberg of First Aid Kit performing at the Palace Theatre in St. Paul on Sunday, July 23, 2023.
Sara Fish for MPR

The sisters’ music explored unrequited love, heartbreak, celebration of lasting love, and moving on after losing it. The lyrics were descriptive and extraordinarily personal, offering an intimate glimpse at the duo’s lived experience on the subject matter. On “It’s a Shame,” Klara reflects on the inevitable hurt of wanting an old lover to stay around, singing “Who have I become / Who will I be / Come tomorrow / Tell me it’s okay / If I ask you to stay / Sometimes the night cuts through me like a knife / I know it’s a shame.”

Despite these heartfelt and moving themes, the tone of First Aid Kit’s music was upbeat, danceable, even joyful. Whether a diversion to hide one’s true feelings or an inspiration to focus on the lighter side of difficult situations, this coexistence of two opposing emotions seemed to provide new insight into the band. In fact, Klara called out the multi-layered nature of the music before a performance of the painful and reflective “Rebel Heart,” telling the audience “It’s not sad if you ignore the lyrics, but please don’t ignore the lyrics.”

About halfway through the show, the rest of the band left the stage for the sisters to sing several stripped-down tracks on their own. After a moving cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird” in honor of the late Christine McVie, the pair performed “Ghost Town” from their debut album The Big Black and Blue. As they leaned their heads toward one another with their eyes closed, their expressive lyricism about what could come in the future was as heart-wrenching as it was hopeful. The entire theater fell silent, completely mesmerized by the gentle richness of the sisters’ voices. As they sang, attendees began to softly sing the chorus back to them.

A woman dances and plays bass onstage — Johanna Söderberg of First Aid Kit performing at the Palace Theatre in St. Paul on Sunday, July 23, 2023.
Sara Fish for MPR

The pair concluded the set with hits “Emmylou” and “Fireworks” before disappearing from the stage. After more massive cheers from the audience, the pair returned, now clad in sparkling silver matching outfits. The sisters danced around the stage, reaching out hands to audience members and singing to each other, regularly directing the crowd to clap on beat and cueing which verses to sing next. For an audience clearly made up of dedicated fans, it didn’t take much to inspire attendees to join in and sing along loudly with the band.

First Aid Kit’s encore ended with Stay Gold’s “Silver Lining,” turning their 2014 hit into a powerful, foot-stomping, crowd-singing anthem of seeking out the bright side of any hard situation. As the crowd filtered out to the sounds of fellow Swedish act ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” the message of the final song, as well as the other tracks’ themes of looking ahead to the promise of the future, seemed particularly resonant: in the face of hurt, hardships, and heartbreak, there’s always an opportunity to celebrate joy and light.

First Aid Kit