After 50 years in the game, Träden are still masters of psych

Bands with less of a keen eye on commercial prospects - including Sweden’s Träd, Gräs och Stenar, latterly renamed as Träden - waded in much, much deeper into hippie era’s ideas of communal living, abandoned egos, inner-space exploration and the thrilling spontaneous expression that free-form jamming offered on the occasions when the planets were correctly aligned.

It doesn’t take that much imagination to smell the bittersweet whiff of nostalgia for these bygone, more innocent times in a tune like “Hoppas Du Förstor” ("Hope You Understand"), even if the listener’s skills in Swedish only allow for the occasional phrase to be understood. This simultaneously mournful and warily hopeful ballad - complete with violin that nods towards the downbeat moments of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - proves that Träden have managed to expand their skills-base since their perma-noodling origins. Although extended jams remain the essence of Träden (the band’s original name was retired with 2017’s Tack för Kaffet (So Long), the last album to feature most of the founding members) now anchor their explorations on material that is a lot more inviting to the casual listener than a loose space-rock jam stretching out over an expanse of 30 minutes.

The band’s new moniker (Träden = "the trees") proves apt. The potent grooves cooked up by near-founder member Jakob Sjoholm (in the line-up since 1970) and newer recruits Reine Fiske (also active in Swedish psych-rock masters Dungen and The Amazing, and absolutely on fire throughout the album), Hanna Östergren (drums) and bassist Sigge Krantz prove as robust, unmoveable, majestic and vibrantly organic as a dense forest.

After a tentative acoustic introduction, opener “När Lingoner Mognar” ("lingonberries forever") blooms into a mammoth, galloping beast that revisits Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s hypnotic, deceptively simple blend of brief, melancholy verses and grottily beautiful, open-ended guitar explorations that aren’t so much solos as grizzled, molten chunks of sound. Elsewhere, “Kung Karlsson“ welds a loping, funk-hued gallop into increasingly frazzled and frantic guitar interplay that inches ever closer to the thrilling atonal shriek of, say, The Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call My Name”. It adds up to one of the most electrifying recent defences on behalf of the enduring transcendental potential of the concept that usually brings to mind terrifying visions of bleary-eyed long-hairs milking the blues scale for half an eternity: jamming.

Träden fares equally well when the amps are turned down. The solemn (and seriously beautiful) slow-burn of “Hymn” brings to mind a more nimble incarnation of the desert-scorched jams on Earth’s The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull. Again, it’s hard not to read some reference to the band’s long journey in the track’s graceful, gentle glide. Whilst Träden’s methods pay tribute to the band’s illustrious past, this is in no way a band trading on the lowered expectations of cosy nostalgia: the steadily intensifying fury of the awe-inspiring closer “Det Finns Blått” (‘there is blue’) suggests Träden’s trance-inducing powers may be sharper than ever before.