Swedish singer-songwriter Nicolai Dunger debuted with albums of surreal songs, that sounded influenced by Robert Wyatt, Tim Buckley and Van Morrison while boasting neoclassical arrangements.

He opens Songs Wearing Clothes (Telegram, 1996) impersonating a sober Tim Buckley and engaging in cheerful melisma in the jazzy orchestral Love Birds. He then indulges in the bluesy 1000 Rainbows, with gospel backup choir, and in the nocturnal swinging Stars Don't Bark. The combination of creative singing and orchestral arrangements is particularly effective in shaping the ominous atmosphere of Whispering Song, a standout in which he sounds like a drunk Tim Buckley, and corraling the dreamy and sinister folk lullaby Brother. The orchestral arrangement becomes a dueting voice in the abstract lament Once Upon A Time. Tribute To Chet weds a string section with Chet Baker-esque trumpet for another climatic moment. His vocal acrobatis, mixing jazzy phrasing and pop crooning, with its repertory of warbling vibrato and elongated syllables, greatly enhances relatively simple songs like Honey Trampoline (another standout, with psychedelic guitar overtones) and Pee Straight Up. The closer is the bombastic agonizing Van Morrison-ian melodrama We Left Us, with screaming distorted guitars and no orchestral instruments, a third standout. The confessional lyrics are less philosophical than Morrison's and less poetic than Buckley's. In general, they matter little.

Eventide (Atrium, 1997) opens with the neoclassical instrumental Eufrosyna, an adagio for strings and organ. Later, Eufrosyna Pt II intones a gloomy ode with wind instruments. Further on, Hardship is a brief scherzo for wind instruments. And finally Eventide is a slow, stately, suspenseful "largo" with Bach-ian organ. These four instrumentals seem to imply ambitions of classical musicianship. His forte remains his voice, which drifts through the bucolic strings of Said It Belongs To My Heart, and waltzes in I Do Declare evoking classic Broadway musicals. An undercurrent of tormented and almost neurotic tics permeates all songs, even the dreamy Wonderland. The highlights come towards the end. The orchestral tension matches the hysterical falsetto in the surging Black Hole Sun. The accompaniment reaches a peak of complexity and quirkiness in Come & Move. The sorrowful Winter Girl is the most Buckley-esque moment. There is also a Tribute To Nick Drake, a spare, guitar-only affair.

His pop alter-ego blossomed (without orchestral arrangements) on the more regular songs of This Cloud is Learning (Dolores, 1999 - Overcoat, 2005). The breezy Independence is the catchiest one, and Something In The Way a close second. A mixed blessing, these simpler songs are rarely capable of capitalizing on his solemn phrasing. What Tomorrow is the notable exception, a country-soul song that could fit well in Van Morrison's repertoire, and possibly Dunger's most radio-friendly tune ever. The rest runs the gamut from the spartan Father to the psychedelic Buckley-esque Butterflyin' Friend. The real highlights are perhaps the gentle folk lullabies Below The Night and If I Were A Little Star, which stand at the opposite end of Dunger's trademark complex songs. No less enchanting (or harrowing) is the gloomy abstract murmur of Songbegging.

Dunger turned his original underground project upside down on Blind Blemished Blues (Hot Stuff, 2000), an album that, by his previous standards, is wild and and streamlined. The 16-minute Talking Blues is a rambling meditation embedded in a desolate soundscape of mellow synth drones and ticking guitar, a moribund atmosphere roamed by a dissonant saxophone and a crooner and shouter who combines Van Morrison and Patti Smith, and a trance worthy of a raga. The eight-minute Starblues and a Wild Evening rides a blustering honky-tonk shuffle with a mix of Neil Young's existential neurosis, Lynyrd Skynyrd's southern bravado and the Band's soul pathos. The two colossal compositions tower over the rest, but the rest includes Blemished Blues, a swinging fanfare halfway between Randy Newman and Tom Waits, and the spectral psychedelic agony of Steady as a Rock.

That album was the first part of a trilogy completed by A Dress Book (Hot Stuff, 2001) and Sweat Her Kiss (Hot Stuff, 2002).

In the meantime, Dunger the mainstream singer delivered Soul Rush (Dolores, 2001), enhanced with lavish arrangements of strings, horns, piano and percussion (mostly by the Esbjorn Svensson Trio). This album achieved a sleek fusion of soul, jazz and rock while retaining a more or less traditional song format. The laid-back ballad I'd Rather Die, the poignant country melodrama Soul Rush, even the comic bluegrass dance Dr Zhivago's Train, are certainly shiny products. The highlight is the rousing Van Morrison-ian rave-up Something New. The problem is that sometimes these ballads become bordeline moronic, like in All the Love Days and Tears and Return of Love. The final triptych of the tormented six-minute Ballad Of A Relationship (another glorious imitation of Van Morrison), the seven-minute country elegy Where Harmony Is Heard and the six-minute whispered lament Pass The Chains up the ante, proving that Dunger can be a master of introversion.

Far less ambitious, Tranquil Isolation (Dolores, 2002 - Overcoat, 2003) wasted the intuitions of its predecessor in a rather trivial alt-country format, with the notable exception of the six-minute Last Night I Dreamt of Mississippi.

Just like Tranquil Isolation, something is missing from Here's My Song You Can Have It (Universal International, 2004 - Zoe, 2006), compared with the achievements of Dunger's early career, as if he had suddenly become afraid of his emotions and his musical intuitions. Backed by Mercury Rev, the album is mostly devoted to shorter songs (the piano-driven Country Lane, the horns-infected Way Up High, the lyrical Wild White Horses) except for the eight-minute The Year of the Love and Hurt Cycle. The album continued to reduce his ambitions while emphasizing his emotions in a way that, willingly or unwillingly, resembled the path followed by Van Morrison.

Nicolai Dunger's experimental alter-ego A Taste Of Ra delivered two confused works, A Taste Of Ra (2005) and II (2006), but then converged on Van Morrison's blues-jazz-folk fusion for small chamber ensemble with the 42-minute six-movement suite Morning Of My Life (2007).

Later albums include: Sjunger Edith Sodergran (2006), Rosten Och Herren/ The Rust and the Lord (2007), Nicollide and the Carmic Retribution (2008), Play (2009), Ballad of This Land (2011). En Svit Med Par/ A Suite with Couples (2012), Den Vita Stenen/ The White Stone (2014), Upstate Gospel Sessions (2014), Arkebuseringen Av Egot/ The Arquebusiering of the Ego (2017), Terror & Tradition (2018), Raison D’etre (2019), Tonsattningar och Andra Sanger/ Compositions and other Songs (2019), Every Line Runs Together (2022), Vessel (2023), Melody Rules (2024), Rooto the Fruit (2025).