Review: Bror Gunnar Jansson clips out murder cases for new album, ‘They Found My Body in a Bag’

The tragedy of Catrine de Costa stands as one of the most grisly murders to sweep Sweden. In the height of summer in ’84, separate bags of her remains were discovered along the side of a road in Stockholm. The case was quickly met with widespread panic and vast media coverage. Suspected killers Thomas Allgen (a general practitioner) and Teet Härm (pathologist) were greatly implicated and brought to trial, but given the state of de Costa’s body and the unknown cause of death, they were acquitted. It’s around such a harrowing, brutally-relentless story that singer, songwriter and musician Bror Gunnar Jansson builds his fourth studio album. They Found My Body in a Bag, which examines various other real life murder tales, too, is darkly troubling, yet beautifully-performed and poetic.

“Body in a Bag” is the artful, heart-throbbing linchpin, cracking open de Costa’s story with raw detail ⏤ but it’s not celebratory. Jansson’s words serve as a piercing reminder of the misery that befell her; there’s a certain level of honor that oozes from his performance. “These songs are not me trying to make entertainment – I’ve never considered myself as doing entertainment – of these horrific things that some people have done to others, and all that suffering that has caused,” he offers in press materials. “This is simply my way of trying to cope with this world we’re living in and the notion that some people become evil and where that evil comes from. As always, this is male violence mostly inflicted on women. We need to end this. And together we can.”

His musicality laces up the guitar lines into a creeping rhythm that pricks the gut. “My killer’s on the loose / Maybe you heard it on the news,” he smacks his lips. He slips into role as narrator to exact further weight to the story, drawing out his vocal into a slicing jab. “Machine” trudges along in the dirt, as well ⏤ utilizing the 2017 murder of journalist Kim Wall as a lyrical reference point. Inventor Peter Madsen invited her to his submarine, and Wall would never be seen alive again. Jansson wraps his voice around the story, bone-chilling whispers barely escaping his lungs. “In his sealed tin can, no one could hear her screams / He destroyed his invention, tried to save his own skin,” he exhales. The eight-minute thriller called “Stalker” grinds with splintered and grimy electric guitar and makes note of the 2018 stalker case involving Jacqueline Ades, who sent a man 65,000 text messages and later broke into his home to bathe after only one date. “If you hate me, I will hate you more,” he hisses into the blackest night.

“Det Stora Oväsendet” conjures up the terrifying infamy of Laurentius Christophori Hornaeus, a Swedish priest and witch-hunter in the 1600s. Bubbling percussion murmurs between a guitar’s weepy howl into an eight-minute piece of agony; it’s an instrumental that builds and pops with skin-peeling tension. It’s spooky and stomach-turning, as it swims among Hornaeus’ criminal actions against children (he used to lock some in an oven or dunk them in freezing water). Later, “There’s a Killer on the Loose” bangs and bounces along with the fevered, adrenaline-fueled paranoia and terror of Jansson’s own near-brush with a murderer ⏤ two years ago, right on his street, another man was stabbed (and fortunately survived). The next spring, a second man around the corner met a more tragic fate. “Please don’t kill me with your knife,” Jannsson pleads into a frantic musical hubbub.

“Will You Help Me When I’m Old?” plants firmly into his signature style, gritty shading and vibrancy, but scatters the grim motifs for levity. “I’m trying to read your signals, but I don’t understand / Tell me something about you,” he sings on the song that’s very clearly a bar hookup song. His voice still slithers, but there’s a satisfying and boozy playfulness that surrounds him. He later proposes, quite boldly, “If we help each other out, we can have so fun tonight.” The closer “Driving Through Norrland, Listening to Earth” is an 11-minute epic dedicated to the Seattle-based band called Earth and trips along at a moody, tepid pace. It’s as hearty as it is delicate, the music at times lush and fulfilling.

Jansson’s fourth album, You Found My Body in a Bag (co-produced with Oskar Karlsson) is a fascinating glimpse into the real life macabre, and it most certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s swamped in a visceral, instinctual charm, and Jansson solidifies himself as one of the great storytellers of this generation.

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