It's a Shame

First Aid Kit's "It's a Shame," from 2014's *Stay Gold*, is Swedish sisters singing American sorrow with a precision that borders on uncanny. The Söderberg sisters built their reputation on close harmony, and here those voices braid together so tightly they become a single grieving instrument — Klara's lead and Johanna's answering line moving in the genetic lockstep only siblings achieve. The production is lush, warm Americana: brushed drums, pedal steel weeping in the margins, a full-bodied folk-pop swell that nods to Emmylou Harris and Laurel Canyon without ever feeling like pastiche. Lyrically it's a portrait of restless emptiness — lying in bed in the middle of the day, the days bleeding together, the dull persistent ache of loneliness and self-recrimination. "It's a shame" lands as both apology and lament, a phrase turned over and over. What's remarkable is the contrast between the gorgeous, golden-hour arrangement and the hollow it describes; the beauty almost consoles the desolation. This is road-trip melancholy, the song for staring out a train window at fields going by, the kind of sad that's somehow comforting. That two young women from Stockholm could so completely inhabit the weary heart of American country-folk remains one of the genre's lovelier border crossings.