If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past six years, you’ve likely come across a number of posts about Victoria + Jean, a Stockholm-based avant pop duo, who have a growing international profile across the European Union for a slinky and seductive sound consisting of jean’s swaggering, whiskey fueled, bluesy guitar work paired with Victoria’s urgently sensual vocals as you’ll hear on “Why Won’t You,” which I wrote about back in November 2014.
Divine Love, the duo’s full-length debut is slated for a long-awaited Stateside release on April 29 and the album is reportedly influenced by the events of the duo’s live — a period of constant moving around, including Trans-Atlantic flights between London, Stockholm, Paris, Brussels and New York. Now, earlier this month I wrote about the album’s first single (and video) “Härligt Sverige,”(which translates from its original Swedish into English as “Beautiful Sweden”) a hauntingly gorgeous love song to Victoria’s beloved homeland that sounds like sirens calling out to Viking sailors “Come home. Come home. Come home . . .”
Divine Love‘s second and latest single “Where We Belong” will further cement the duo’s reputation for crafting incredibly stormy and dramatic material that draws from the blues, art pop, indie rock, and in this particular song the work of PJ Harvey as the song is comprised of alternating dreamy, lullaby-like sections comprised of what sounds like gently strummed ukulele or gently plucked high register guitar chords (like that high C chord) paired with Victoria’s gently lilting vocals and dramatic sections comprised of bluesy guitar chords paired with Victoria’s plaintive howls — and punctuated with propulsive and explosive blasts of drums before gently fading out.
The recently released music video continues the duo’s reputation for pairing absolutely stunning and at times surreal visuals with their hauntingly dramatic sounds. Throughout the video, you see a lithe dancer throwing sand both forward and in reverse; a clock and other mechanical devices slowly come apart as though gravity were pulling them apart; explosions; and most important, beautiful and passion people throughout. As a photographer, I envy every single moment.
