Minru

The music of Minru captures the glow of the morning sun warming the forest and wraps its listeners in a feeling that stays with them as they walk around the world. Her blend of folk and indie rock sounds like music woven from light and shadow, the interplay casting dancing patterns as the songs come to life. It wakes something in the listener, a rare sense of experiencing something musically special that makes the noise outside fade away, leaving you immersed in its magical world.

Minru is the project of Swedish musician Caroline Blomqvist. In 2022, she released the first Minru album, Liminality, a blend of winding layers of acoustic guitar, piano, and strings, moving testaments to grief and loss.

After a long stretch in Berlin, Blomqvist moved back home to Gothenburg, and her new record, Thin Places, began during a winter trip to the Swedish wilderness. Decamping to a cabin in the woods for a break from city life, she began playing with songs, which grew into Thin Places. Like Liminality, it draws emotional nuance from subtlety, presence in small touches and details, saying more with a whisper than most songs do with a roar. Where it differs is in intimacy, still painted with broad soundscapes, but stripped back and raw, it moves beyond folk into something more silvery, hypnotic, and almost hymnal.

– Austin Maloney