Blues Pills – Birthday: Swedish Retro-Rock With Soul at Its Core

When Blues Pills released "Birthday" on August 2, 2024, it came with a lighter, sunnier sound than we're used to from the Swedes. Their fourth studio album, produced by Freddy Alexander at Studio Cobra in Stockholm, finds the band in a comfortable working groove. Elin Larsson sings as if she has lived every line – powerful, vulnerable, and without a single throwaway note.

The title track "Birthday" opens the record with an almost Motown-flavoured swing, while "Don't You Love It" and "Bad Choices" pull the band back into the heavy, fuzzy retro-rock territory they built their career on. "Top Of The Sky" may be the most beautiful ballad Blues Pills have ever recorded, and "Like A Drug" reminds you why they were once mentioned in the same breath as Janis Joplin and Free.

The production is warm without ever feeling nostalgic – breathing room around the drums, an organic bass tone, guitars that inhale and exhale. The band of Larsson, Zack Anderson (guitar), Kristoffer Schander (bass) and Cory Berry (drums) plays as a single living organism. At 38 minutes and 47 seconds it's a compact record – no filler, no detours. Eleven songs that each earn their place.

This isn't an album that will rewrite blues history, but it is one that reminds us how good classic blues-rock can sound when it's made with love, precision, and a singer at Elin Larsson's level.