There are some interesting facts about Maggie Bjorklund that make a listener want to like her music. She was born and raised in Europe, yet makes a style of music heavily influenced by classic American country. She plays a mean steel guitar and composes most of her own music. Her music is interesting as well, though sometimes in that way that isn't quite a compliment. On her debut album Coming Home, Bjorklund shows a distinct mix of her roots and her wings. Calexico is a guest on the album and the music tends towards their early work. She has a fairly distinctive voice and the resulting work comes across like Neko Case's sweeter sister taking a trip through the New Age section of a music store. The fusion of voice and style create an atmosphere that become a little too dense and monochromatic as the album plays on. All in all, Coming Home has an overarching vibe of music that’s waiting to be used on the next Quentin Tarantino soundtrack.

The album opens with the instrumental “Wasteland,” a Western edged lullaby that borrows elements from Sergio Leone soundtracks. This Bjorklund penned track features the artist herself on steel and guitar, and Barb Hunter with a lovely Cello melody, and shows Bjorklund's true gift. Bjorklund separates herself from most of her female peers in that she pens the music for her songs and leaves the lyrics to others. She makes clever and creative music choices, though she does tend to rely on the same ones repeatedly. Her Gothic love for Spaghetti Westerns rears its head in nearly every song, making the individual iterations of it seem less interesting and creative than they are. While her twisty, dark, Southwestern desert music makes for striking individual songs, they grow to a sort of monotony as the album progresses. Bjorklund is, at heart, a musician and plays steel and guitars on every single track, occasionally adding Hammond Organ or percussion instruments into the mix. She celebrates her musicians, giving a luxurious amount of time and space for each player on each track. Coming Home even features not one, but five separate instrumental tracks, a feat unheard of on albums not made by bluegrass artists. This sort of creativity, passion and fearlessness definitely makes Maggie Bjorklund an artist worth paying attention to.

While she is a phenom as an instrumentalist, Maggie Bjorklund is slightly weaker as a vocalist, yet her voice does hold its own charms. It comes off as a mix of Nancy Sinatra and Neko Case, though it is slightly sweeter than either of them. Despite this, she avoids any hint of saccharine with a careful mix of controlled delivery, creative lyrics, and clever production choices. Her voice fits well with the feel of her music, with her airy soprano calling back to the vanilla singers of the 1950's and 1960's that her music is filtered through. The lyrics on the album are made of sterner, more sinewy stuff. “I'd climb that mountain again, if I had the power,” she sings on “Intertwined,” “I'd cast off these hours that never end, but I'm on the shoreline so I pretend.” The songs are frequently love songs, but they are not the sweet and cloying sentiments which usually make up the genre. “Softly cigarettes will dance on our regrets, horse shoes and bad bets tip hats to loving mind,” she bubbles on “Summer Romance.” The warmth of the lyrics come off in contrast to the often colder melodies which surround them. She hits on other, more timeless themes, life and loss, and the title track itself. “Coming Home” is a beautiful reflective song that lends itself to every definition of the term. “”Every act must have its play, and every playground stars, the scars and scrapes,” she muses on one of the closing tracks, “but we must live like we were made, born to be here, born to stay.”

Maggie Bjorklund is a remarkably promising new artist, and Coming Home is an album full of wonderful songs. It is just sort of being a wonderful album. Taken by itself, each song shimmers just like a its own special gem, and lingers long in the memory. Taken together, their similarities meld them into an album that is something less than the sum of its parts. However, it is an album worth listening to, if only in pieces. Hopefully, by her second outing, Bjorklund will have followed in the footsteps of her musical heroes like Neko Case and Calexico. Both artists found their own way to maintain a Gothic, signature sound while embracing more diverse elements.

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