In 2024 Jesper Lindell and his band, The Brunnsvik Sounds, trekked from Sweden to the U.S. to record covers of classic American soul music. Over four action-packed days, they visited Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama and Royal Studios in Memphis. The result was a pair of exhilarating nine-track albums, both running about a half-hour, that do the performers proud.
3614 Jackson Highway, documenting the Muscle Shoals sessions, was released earlier this year. Now Royal wraps up the story. A captivating labor of love, this entertaining set doesn’t seek to reinvent or surpass its sources, but refreshes a familiar, deceptively diverse style of music, mixing big hits and more obscure tunes. If southern soul, a well-seasoned blend of R&B and country, has always been hard to pin down, it’s no easier to define after these savvy interpretations.
