Over the last 10 years, Jimmy Wahlsteen has been seen playing with many of Sweden’s most popular artists. He’s toured with the alternative pop band Eskobar a lot, mostly playing electric guitar. A few years ago Jimmy decided to focus more on his acoustic guitar and after having listened to his debut album “181st Songs”, I can only say that he seems to have made a wise decision.
The fact that he markets himself with nicely produced videos on YouTube doesn´t hurt. ”181st songs” contains 11 songs, all of them Jimmy Wahlsteen originals. Most songs are short, around three minutes. The arrangements are pop inspired with verse, chorus and middle eight.
Jimmy has recorded and produced most of the album himself and managed to accomplish a very nice sound. The balancing act of creating catchy versus interesting songs in the instrumental genre is always hard but Jimmy masters the challenge with great success.
Jimmy uses a number of open tunings and capo positions to vary his sound. He also adds percussion, strings and electric guitars in his productions.
The first song “Shifts of Attention”, is a rhythmic based track with beautiful melodic parts woven into the riffs. The atmospheric changes between the song’s different parts is very interesting.
On the melodic track “It’s Your Favorite” Jimmy uses a ring on his left hand thumb creating a rim shot sound on the guitar neck at the same time as playing the lead.
Another great song is the rhythmic “Rapid Eye Moment” and it is enhanced with delay effects in the production/mix. Live, Jimmy uses live-loops to build layers of overdubs to recreate the studio version.
“The Urge to Gossip” with its live horn section and funky guitar riff makes a terrific contrast to the more harmonic based songs.
“181st Songs” is a beautiful debut album with brilliant guitar playing that definitely deserves its listeners. Like most guitar albums it works fine as background music but it also grabs your attention and keeps you entertained.
Michael Linderoth / Fuzz magazine February 2010
