Tobias Arbo - “Saudade”

Stockholm’s Tobias Arbo has emerged from within our seemingly endless list of songs to review. With his spectacular acoustic guitar abilities and soft, tender voice, it is very easy to hear the first bits of “Saudade” and quickly assume that Arbo is just another, everyday folk singer, but he is something much more than that. With lyrics that speak of distant ocean waves and the falling leaves, any listener will immediately picture a place much better than behind the desk at a day job, which may elude to the title of the track- in Portuguese, “saudade” can be translated to “the melancholy of missing something you never had.”

Don’t let the innocence of the first verse fool you. ”Saudade,” while starting off with a peaceful feeling and a playful simplicity, gradually builds in both emotion and complexity. About a minute and a half into this thing, you will see what we mean, with the addition of a backing vocal brought to us by the magnificent angels of folk music heaven, followed by a much wider second verse, complete with a fantastic harmony– not to mention Arbo’s sweet falsetto. And at about the two-and-a-half minute point, an upbeat, percussive addition carries us off until the end. This is a quick trip, at only three minutes in length, but “Saudade” takes the listener on a voyage through a vast spectrum of emotions.

“Saudade” is the first single from Tobias Arbo’s EP, which is set to be released in 2023. About the track, Arbo adds: “When the possibility of something coming true that you long for is slipping away… before you even had it, you start to feel like you’ve lost that something irrevocably.”

And, of course, a Spotify link for all the kids:

-TM