Victoria Bergsman quit as lead singer of The Concretes hours before a BBC TV performance. A year later, the Swedish songstress has reinvented herself as a sort of female Nick Drake. So why is she called Taken by Trees, asks Brian Boyd.

LAST year Swedish indie-pop band The Concretes were on tour in the US. After a gig in New York, all their gear was stolen. Soon after, lead singer Victoria Bergsman collapsed from exhaustion. Undaunted, The Concretes flew to the UK, where they had landed a high-profile slot on the Jonathan Ross show.

Hours before recording, Bergsman told the band she was leaving.

"It wasn't that sudden," says the now solo singer. "I had actually been planning to leave for over a year, but things just came to a head at that time. There wasn't just one reason, but I didn't like all the touring we had to do and I didn't like how the band worked on a certain 'democracy' principle, which always led to compromise - which isn't good for true musical expression. I didn't like being away from Sweden so much and I had terrible stage fright, which is not a good thing if you're the lead singer.

"I tend to get very emotional when I sing; I just can't turn the emotions down and I break down a lot on stage. It's very demanding for me.

"So it was all those reasons rolled into one. But no, it wasn't sudden - although it may have seemed that way."

The Concretes replaced Bergsman by promoting the existing drummer to lead vocalist. They've just released their first post-Victoria album, the knowingly titled Hey, Trouble. Bergsman, meanwhile, disillusioned by the music industry, thought of packing it in until some old Swedish friends - actually, the band known as Peter, Bjorn and John - came to her with a demo of a song they wanted her to sing on.The frightfully infectious result, Young Folks, has become an international smash hit.

"I knew the guys for a long time and they really just needed a break with their music because they had been struggling a lot," she says. "When they first played me the song, I just though how brilliant it was. I think it turned out really well, but that hasn't anything to do with me. I just helped them out; it's not my song."

When Bergsman mentioned that she was working on a few songs of her own for a solo album, Bjorn agreed to produce it and John agreed to play on it.

"That was last August, when Bjorn helped me record the demo with John doing the drumming. I was very wary all the time of approaching record companies with the demo because I thought if I got signed then I would have to tour the album and I really didn't want to tour.

"I had known about the Rough Trade record label in London and I had heard from other musicians about how they work and how they focus on the artist and you don't have to compromise with them over anything so I posted off a copy to them. The head, Geoff Travis, said he loved it and agreed to put it out. When I mentioned about not wanting to tour, he said he was OK with that, so that was a big relief. Instead, I told him I'd do a few European shows this summer - and Dublin is on my list - instead of one big tour."

Bergsman didn't want to use her own name for her solo album, so instead has opted for the name "Taken By Trees".

"That name just means it's me and whatever musicians are with me at the time. I just couldn't keep away from writing songs but I really didn't want to use my own name on the solo project, so Taken By Trees suits me very well. It's a very different type of music to the stuff I did in The Concretes. Sometimes in that band I felt I was shouting instead of singing. So this is a real less-is-more approach. The songs are quite sparse and the focus tends to be more on the vocals than anything else."

Which is a good thing, as Bergsman's voice is a rare treat, sultry and resonant. She glides over the songs on Open Field beautifully, really capturing the album's prevailing pastoral mood. It's so exquisite that at times she could only remind you of a female Nick Drake.

"I thinks the songs are a reaction to all that happened last year. These are the songs that I couldn't really have created as part of a group. I suppose we all had certain roles in The Concretes and I never really questioned that. Now that I can express myself as a solo artist, I find I'm going into to different areas - and areas that suit my voice much better. People have been picking up on a sort of defiant theme in some of the songs, but I honestly think there is more hope in the songs than anything else."

Tell Me, the gorgeous opening track, is beguiling enough. But over the course of the album Bergsman goes a bit off-road and even manages to incorporate some Americana and even a dreamy instrumental. At times she even bends herself into a Billy Bragg-type shape, as on Too Young, which sounds like a new version of Bragg's A New England.

"You're not the first person to mention that," she says. "I really like that Billy Bragg song but I haven't heard that much of his stuff. Some of my songs are, I think, a bit too slow for radio, in terms of a single release, so we're putting out the song Lost and Found as the first single, as it's a bit more upbeat than the rest.

"Overall, though, I'm still exploring this new freedom I have with the songs, so there are quite a few changes throughout the album. But the mood, I think, is quite similar all the way through.

"You know, last year wasn't a good year. But I always had this feeling that 2007 would be a good one and with this album I have even more reason to believe that."

See/Hear

Listen to Taken By Trees at www.takenbytrees.com . Open Fields is on the Rough Trade label.