Agnas Bros: ‘Sista Försöket’ (‘Last Attempt’)

I feel like I’m late to the party, having missed Agnas Bros’ four previous albums: indeed, ‘Sista Försöket’ has been out since September 2025, but Swedish jazz isn’t always a staple of UK radio, in my defence. It was a delight to feel the band’s energy when they appeared on stage at last week’s jazzahead! in Bremen.

Undoubtedly highly adept musicians, these four brothers have a way of playing together that felt on stage like they were constantly listening to each other and responding as if they didn’t have such a shared familial history.

For anyone else new to this band, they are Kasper Agnas (guitar), Max Agnas (piano), Mauritz Agnas (bass) and Konrad Agnas (drums).

The opening track - Sviten - introduces some quasi-random electronic crackles into traditional jazz quartet voicings and moving into We Are. The bass opening of Cheeseburger allows Mauritz to shine and, actually, one of the strengths of this album is that the individual players all get their moment in the spotlight. There’s almost a telepathic quality that certainly came across when seeing Agnas Bros live on stage.

More crackles and the brief Outro heralds the second half of the album, which begins with the simply lovely Stumbles, with some dextrous interchanges between guitar and piano.

I wish I understood Swedish, because the poetic start to track six - Psalm 967 - sounds like I should know it. The internet tells me that the final track - Nagon Hyllade en Glass - means ‘Someone praised an ice cream’. I think what this album proves is that sometimes it doesn’t matter what tracks are called, if the music is this good.

Although all well-known collectively and individually in the jazz scene in Sweden, Agnas Bros have yet to venture musically into the UK. Perhaps it’s time they did.

‘Sista Försöket’ (‘Last Attempt’) is out now so check it out on Bandcamp