H. Self - Skälva (Black Vinyl LP)

Facts At last, it's here. H. Self's debut album in Swedish. Is this today's Cornelis we have here? The lyrics are written from the margins, for people on the margins. Something rawer and more honest about Sweden today is hard to find. Like the opening line of the song “Gemenskap”:

Even the lazy ones drive an XC90, drive 40 where it's 70. Even the drunks go to work, and the ketamine hare is a snob. Even the lazy ones drive an XC90.

Not so different from reality, where the Stureplan elite funds the shootings in the suburbs.

It isn't easy to always stand at the bottom; the very definition of the place keeps working against you. But against the odds, H. Self, Henric Hammarbäck, has turned the struggle from it into his own: it is the bottom he rises from again and again. With a pen whose ink refuses to dress up reality, he recounts stories where the glimmers of light are few and the tragedies many. And even if the bottom is where you stand today, the struggle always moves on toward the glimmers of light that still break through in between.

With two full-length albums behind him, H. Self began work on a follow-up during the year, the third in the series. The full-length Skälva is released on vinyl and digital platforms on September 26, 2024, via Ella Ruth Institutet.