Amanda Bergman - embraced for a second as we die (2026) Hi-Res

Amanda Bergman has long been one of Sweden’s most quietly powerful singer-songwriters. Her best work to date, Your Hand Forever Checking On My Fever, was only just released in 2024, making it a fantastic surprise to receive embraced for a second as we die so soon afterwards.

Where Bergman previously folded her vulnerabilities into folksy arrangements, here she leans into a soft-rock warmth. Songs like grasp feature unashamedly 80s arrangements, big open road melodies and hooks that feel almost Californian, somewhere between the glow of Dylan’s Infidels and the clean, sun-soaked sound of HAIM.

These songs exist in the space between despair and consolation. The grief-stricken never known like that walks that tightrope: 'Born in the waves and we are not easy / I had never loved like that'. The following track, is this how you said you’d be gone, soars and offers catharsis, Bergman singing: 'So pick up again, it’s so hard to win / For a second of love, I’m giving everything'.

sick of time feels like the record’s emotional core, a tender meditation on parenthood and the pain of the passage of time. Even at its most heartbreaking, embraced for a second as we die reminds us to inhale life and that clarity and connection, however brief, can still be found.