James Yorkston and Nina Persson: 'It’s made me think that everyone from Sweden is really quite fantastic'

Joking aside, the 51-year-old from Fife says he was casting around for a suitable collaborator when Karl-Jonas Winqvist, leader of the Swedish music collective the Second Hand Orchestra with whom he’d worked on the 2021 album The Wide, Wide River, suggested approaching Persson.

“I knew Nina’s music of course, and I trust K-J absolutely, so I said, ‘Let’s ask her and see what she says’,” he explains.

Although unfamiliar with Yorkston’s work – which was encompassed more than a dozen albums over the past 20 years – Persson says she “really, really liked” the couple of songs heard and was intrigued to find out more. “That’s what Karl-Jonas is good at – he knows a good match,” she says.

The 48-year-old, known for hits such as Lovefool and My Favourite Game, says she was attracted by the idea that this “wasn’t a really slick pop production where they want to send over files for me to smear my vocals over and email it back”.

“I was sent demos and it was nice that it was songs that I could tell were really good from the core, so you could pretty much do anything with them, but also the idea was also to do it live with a band in the room, that was really appealing to me,” she says. “But when it was in the raw state, with just piano and James’ voice, that alone was really beautiful to me. I thought it was not only warm and cosy but a little challenging for me because it was live recording. I’ve worked in quite controlled environments before, so that was also a new thing for me. I was very happy to be asked.”

Composing on the piano was also a “new venture” for Yorkston, who until one song on The Wide, Wide River had always written on guitar. “I found it very enriching and an easy path to go down,” he says. “I’ve written so many songs on the guitar – you can imagine when you play that first chord sometimes it doesn’t feel as if there’s much further to go which can particularly inspire you. Whereas with a new instrument, which for me was the piano, everything I was playing was inspiring somehow. I know how the piano works but I can’t read music so I just put my hands down in random places and it would create some kind of chord which would kick off an idea for a melody.”

Yorkston’s songs assumed new shapes as he and Persson worked through them with the Second Hand Orchestra in a studio in Stockholm. “On Karl-Jonas’ side they’d never heard them but Nina and I were presenting them in some sort of style,” he says. “I thought they were really good and I knew we could sing them really well together. I don’t want to say I was confident but I wasn’t worried about it because I knew how amazing they were as musicians and the sound that was coming out of just Nina and I was brilliant, so worst-case scenario we could’ve just done it as a duo.”

Persson relished the buzz of only playing the songs three or four times before recording them. “It was so amazing that things just happened as we were playing in the room,” she says. “It’s nice to be surrounded by such good musicians that they’re just striving towards the best it can sound. The Cardigans once spent nine months making a record and that was suicide.”

“I should add,” says Yorkston, “that the Second Hand Orchestra were so good it was luxurious for Nina and I. Everyone was so warm and they were delighted to be there. It was such a hugely positive atmosphere in the room. It’s made me think that everyone from Sweden is really quite fantastic. We did one show with them (in December) and it was such a joyous thing. I know it won’t last forever but whilst it’s there it’s like having a gang of pals, it’s great fun and I think that comes out on stage.”

Family is a recurring theme throughout the record – something Yorkston attributes to spending so much time at home during the pandemic. “James and I have that in common and I think it goes for a lot of people,” says Persson. “I think it does have a little bit to do with the pandemic but also the time of life James and I are in, our parents are getting old, our kids are growing up, I think there’s a lot of reasons why family becomes quite urgent right now. Maybe because I haven’t made a record myself of late, I haven’t written about family that much but it’s something that makes sense to sing about through James’ songs.”

As to whether this album might lead to further collaborations in future, the pair feels it’s too early to say. “It’s possible,” says Persson, “but right now this record has not even come out yet. We haven’t talked about it or planned anything. Nothing is ruled out.”

“We have shows until June at the moment and then potentially some stuff at the end of August, there’s quite a long runway ahead still,” says Yorkston.

“I’d certainly love to work with Nina again...but at this stage however she might start causing trouble,” he adds with a twinkle in his eye.

The Great White Sea Eagle is out on Friday January 13. James Yorkston, Nina Persson and the Second Hand Orchestra play at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on February 8.