For all their sombre, serious songs lavished with pedal steel guitar for instant melancholy effect, it’s great that First Aid Kit don’t come across as world-weary beyond their years. Stockholm sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg are full of beans tonight, immediately ingratiating themselves with the crowd by swigging from a bottle of Irn-Bru, babbling over one another excitedly in that way sisters do, and referring to almost everything – the crowd, Edinburgh’s new cat cafe, their pal Jack White – as “awesome”. Not even Paul Simon, whom they met at a Swedish awards ceremony, is spared their youthful irreverence – just before covering his song America, Johanna describes its author with a butter-wouldn’t-melt grin as “a sweet little guy”.
Likewise, just because the Söderbergs are still only 25 and 22 and it was seven years ago that they first emerged as YouTube stars doesn’t mean they can’t write fearlessly grown-up music. First Aid Kit’s latest album Stay Gold – to which they both cutely sport gold-coloured shoes in tribute – further enriches a veritable bullion reserve of material evoking the spiritual aches and pains of early twentysome-things in the panoramic verbal and musical language of American country and folk.
The sisters’ most valuable asset remains their voices. Dark-haired, severe-fringed guitarist and lead singer Klara’s is light and pure-toned with the slightest lisp; blonde keyboardist Johanna’s is darker, more elemental. When they lock in near-telepathic harmony on a fully unamplified Ghost Town, or throughout the strident lushness of My Silver Lining, or during Shattered and Hollow’s sweeping hymn for suburban dreamers, they could wet the eyes of a chapter of Hells Angels.
First Aid Kit are unfailingly charming company, whether pepping their foot-stomping alt-folk with Scandi-pop flourishes on Master Pretender, or breaking hearts with Emmylou, an ode to companionship and tragic romance couched by Klara in an in-character desire to be an Emmylou Harris to a Gram Parsons or a June Cash to a Johnny. On a night filled with heavenly voices, how perfect that they end with a song about the sanctity of singing.
• At City Hall, Newcastle, 20 Jan. Box office: 0191-277 8030. Then touring.
