HAGNÄS – Follow the River

Laura Hagnäs, (stage name Hagnäs) has released a new single, Follow The River, and if you’re looking for a calming and gentle acoustic singer songwriter track, reminiscent of Norah Jones, then this song will tick all the right boxes for you.

Follow The River comes straight in with gentle acoustic guitar and the most enticing and fragile vocal. Hagnäs’ voice is breathy and airy, reminiscent in places of All About Eve, Lene Marlin or perhaps Joni Mitchell. Hagnäs’ voice is gentle and folky. A little quirky and utterly charming.

For the most part, Follow The River, is a mono track, but what really appealed to us was the interesting use of stereo on just the occasional backing vocals. Backing vocals are intimate, whispered in places and very up front. They demand your attention. They made us smile.

Follow The River is a song about trusting in yourself for things to work out. It’s a call to action and a calm and gentle request to the listener to have faith in themselves and their journey.

The song progresses gently and ambles along in a most charming and authentic way. Later in the track a very simple piano solo over some simple organ chords is added. The whole piece is a lesson in simplicity.

There’s something truly endearing about the music of Laura Hagnäs. We’ve listened to a few of her recent songs and we believe her style is just perfect for sync licensing. Simple, acoustic, vulnerable singer-songwriter tracks such as this are very much in demand right now. We’ve seen artists having great success with both the likes of AMC and BBC for music in this genre at the moment. It looks as though Hagnäs is already having some success with sync licensing and is currently writing the soundtrack for an animated movie.

From a production perspective, a song as simple and uninvolved as this is a pleasant listen. We would suggest a little balance in the low end by high passing at 50Hz and below to remove a little rumble in the track and tidy up some frequencies that most speakers can’t handle anyway. A notch out around 100Hz and also around 200Hz will balance a couple of frequencies in the acoustic guitar track.

We really do love this gentle European folk singer-songwriter track. There’s an enchanting and engaging quality to a song like Follow The River that makes the listener feel almost as though Hagnäs is right there in your living room, providing you with a private concert.