Marlene Oak – Welcome To Oak Land (2025)
Swedish singer-songwriter Marlene Oak has released Welcome to Oak Land, her second full-length album. It’s been five years since she recorded her debut record, Northern Winds, during which time Oak seems to have been rethinking her approach. Northern Winds was a heavy half hour of gorgeously tooled heartbreak ballads founded on her acoustic guitar and powerful voice, much in the vein of her Scandinavian folk compatriots. In the intervening time, Oak dropped a scant few singles until this year, when, in a flurry of activity, she released an EP, Big Time, and seven singles in advance of the new 10-song album.
In hindsight, Oak tips her hand on Big Time, revealing hints of the more upbeat and diverse sound heard on Welcome to Oak Land. The music here is still founded on her voice, guitar, and the effortlessly beautiful melodies she crafts, but she is aided and abetted by multi-instrumentalist Peter Morèn on guitar, bass and keys, and Hannes Hasselberg on drums. Oak and company have a lot in common with the folk-rock sound of singer-songwriters of the early ‘70s, but it is as much a screen through which they filter a variety of styles as it is an identity.
One feels this dominant aesthetic from the beginning and can’t quite let go of it, whether the record touches on the early ’60s pop of ‘The Moon Lingers On’, the blue-eyed soul of ‘Better Days’, or the slow grind of ‘Kitchen Table’. ‘Threading A Fine Line’ opens Welcome to Oak Land with a stately hook on acoustic twelve-string guitar, leading into a warm medium-tempo tune built on acoustic guitars and bolstered by a string section. Oak’s husky voice follows the poetic tradition of observing the passage of time through shifts in natural scenes and seasons. As she weaves these timeless elements together, one can’t help but think of the work of Judy Collins or John Denver.
The sweep of her poetic gestures and the structure of her melodies feel grand and unassailable throughout the record. Oak invests ‘Rhythm in My Heart’ with an urgent belief in her purpose that the string section actively underscores, and she gives the soul number, ‘Words Are Not Enough’, a palpable sense of drama as the melody soars up to the imperative line, “Spirits come and set me free.”
The power-pop of ‘Going Nowhere’ and the late-50s rock of ‘Finally Home’ are lighter fare but pay off in spades what Northern Winds lacks in emotional variety. To this end, ‘Love Is Patient’, the album’s closer and the only song that really connects Oak to her debut, is a stark contrast made all the more potent by the bookends it creates with ‘Threading A Fine Line’. Oak once again watches the seasons change, but this time with greater trepidation concerning a love that may or may not survive.
There’s hardly a misstep on Welcome to Oak Land. This is a beautiful record that captures the spirit of what music can achieve.
Find out more about Marlene Oak on her official website, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify.
