Released 6 February 2026, Meadowlands is the second album by Swedish duo Moon Mother, Sara Mehner and Pat Ahlström. With eight tracks and no filler, it’s a compact, emotionally loaded release that marries slowcore calm with alt-folk and dark-folk textures, using minimal, slow-moving arrangements to frame direct, heavy themes.
The first thing you notice is the beautiful, stripped-back sound, in a similar vein to Emma Ruth Rundle and the more held-back, atmospheric side of Chelsea Wolfe and Myrkur. Tracked at home with a focus on live takes, the album feels close and unpolished in the best way. You can hear the room in the recordings: the way the instrumentation hangs in the air, the subtle imperfections, the breath before a line lands. Instead of smoothing those details away with layers, the duo build carefully on top of them. Accordions, string parts, choral voices, field-recording textures and subtle noise are all soaked in reverb that stretches the space without turning it glossy.
All of that would already be compelling as pure sound, but it lands much deeper because of Sara Mehner’s voice. It doesn’t feel performed so much as lived-in: intimate, slightly haunted, but also surprisingly steady, like someone who’s walked through the fire and is now calmly pointing at the smoke still in the air. Her writing leans on recurring symbols that build an inner mythology of their own. Fire shows up again and again – being left to burn, watching buildings and whole cities go up in flames – and then light returns in other forms: sunrise, windows, gold pouring from a low sun, birds filling the morning. The album never pretends the darkness disappears; it’s more that it never really leaves, but maybe you can learn to walk with it. Pat Ahlström wraps that voice in guitars and strings that drift between gentle folk picking, fuzzed-out swells and slow, weighty chords that wouldn’t sound out of place on a dark ’90s indie record.
In the end, Meadowlands doesn’t chase intensity through volume or pace; it earns it through focus and honesty, turning minimalism into something genuinely weighty. Every sound and image feels considered without ever feeling overworked, and that balance is what makes the record linger. If you gravitate toward introspective, black-clad folk and indie, this is one to take in front to back rather than just picking off a couple of singles.
Check out the album here:
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music
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Find similar sounds in our recommended playlists:
Dark Folk, Neofolk & Doom Folk
Soft & Dreamy Indie Folk
2026: New Indie
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