Though ‘otherworldly’ is often an overused term in music criticism, it would not be a misleading label to attach to much of the independent music that has emerged from Sweden over the last decade or so – from The Knife’s bleak, androgynous landscapes, to the sincere, liquid-pop of The Tough Alliance and CEO and the Balearic escapism of Air France and Studio, all of these musicians share an aesthetic that is at odds with reality. … Continue Reading
The Tallest Man on Earth - Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird
It must be a drag for poor Kristian Matsson, being compared to Bob Dylan every time he opens his mouth, but it’s a comparison which holds more water than the typically lazy parallel drawn between Dylan and anyone who plays an acoustic guitar. The Tallest Man on Earth sports a vocal timbre which frankly sounds like the guy, and, with this brilliant new EP, Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird, he takes another step towards sharing Dylan’s virtuosic maturity and knack for worldly lyricism. We’re going through a period of popular music – ushered in by the Fleet Foxes, currently spearheaded by Mumford and Sons – where trendy nu-Folk is arguably reaching saturation point. Luckily, The Tallest Man on Earth avoids being swept out with the dirge by continuing to broaden, deepen and darken his already excellent craft. … Continue Reading
Museum of Bellas Artes - Days Ahead EP
There’s always a danger of writing yourself into a corner when you release an obscure cover as your debut single – especially when it’s as good as last year’s thoroughly dance-friendly ‘Who Do You Love?’ For listeners unfamiliar with the source material of an unoriginal debut, a first encounter with a collection of original tracks can be alienating; especially if they were expecting material cut from the same cloth – an expectation the band is unlikely to be able to fulfil. And, indeed, this is the risk that Museum of Bellas Artes runs with debut EP Days Ahead. There’s no need to carry out an internet search to discover that ‘Who Do You Love?’ was actually penned by a sixties band called The Sapphires. Listening to these four new tracks makes the fact plain enough. And, of course, the make or break question for any band in this position is: can the self-penned material stand up to that beguiling debut cover song? … Continue Reading
The Concretes - WYWH
After a three-year silence from the previously steadfastly reliable lo-fi Swedish popsters, The Concretes are back with some unexpected news – they’re doing disco and they’ve somehow made it truly their own.
The band’s last record, and the first since the departure of celebrity singer Victoria Bergsman, 2007′s Hey Trouble, was a geekily lovely, country-inspired affair. Lisa Milberg, stepping to the front to take on lead vocals, seemed to bury her voice in layers of harmonies, and when her own sound could be heard clearly, its fragility was almost self-consciously child-like. The album as a whole was a swirling mixture of styles, sounds and feedback, and WYWH sees the band not only stripping the extraneous noise away to create something much purer and yet more complicated, but also has Milberg finding her adult voice and growing into becoming the true female singer of The Concretes. … Continue Reading
Robyn - Body Talk Pt. 2
Robyn’s musical career has actually spanned three decades, spawning five other albums and a Eurovision Song Contest pre-selection in her native Sweden, yet it wasn’t until 2005’s eponymous release Robyn that she began to gain acclaim in the UK. At the start of 2010, Robyn announced that she would be releasing three brand-new albums this year – the stuff of dreams for both her mainstream and underground fans, yet enough to make others take a step back and wonder if she’s up to the challenge. … Continue Reading
ceo - White Magic
It’s become something of a cliché to talk about Sweden as a country that seems predisposed to producing good pop music, particularly over the past half decade. However, it’s worth taking a step back and reflecting on just how wonderfully odd the music that these very singular artists have been offering is – the haunted, pitch-shifting of The Knife’s Silent Shout, and Fever Ray’s warped domesticity last year; Robyn’s globe-trotting, cherry-picking pop songs continue to make her an unlikely star; The Tallest Man On Earth’s folk songs, seemingly removed from any specific time or place. There’s also The Tough Alliance – the duo of Henning Fürst and Eric Berglund whose Balaeric-infused pop music soundtracked lip-synched live shows where the pair threw themselves around the stage, wielded baseball bats and, occasionally, slow danced with each other. … Continue Reading
Bandjo - Bandjo
Bandjo, the largely instrumental debut album from the Swedish duo of the same name, is a spacious and understated collection of expansive epics to which the term ‘progressive’ is to be used as a compliment rather than a criticism. The length of the tracks generally allows Bandjo‘s work the opportunity to breathe and build, often resembling a series of edited jams, rising and falling like the best electronic music. … Continue Reading
Love Is All - Two Thousand And Ten Injuries
Love Is All have come up with a formula for a large percentage of Two Thousand and Ten Injuries: craft jittery, spiky melodies and smother them with the shrieks and vocal tics of lead singer Josephine Olausson. This isn’t necessarily a criticism – for the most part the album fizzes with unadulterated joy, but – as with most things in life – you can have too much of a good thing. … Continue Reading
Ikons - Ikons
Variety is a tricky term. I think I can pretty confidently state that our concentration and our patience has slowly eroded in the past decades. This means that apparently we cannot focus on one and the same thing anymore, as long as we once did. We expect, perhaps even subconsciously demand, that something will happen. A film like 1974′s The Conversation would probably bomb horribly today (even though arguably the subject matter is as nu as it was then). The same essentially goes for music, especially in a musical environment which has so changed in the 21st century. When I interviewed Dayve Hawk of Memory Tapes he said that listeners tend to skim more (not you, obviously), resulting in the need to have a signature sound that people can immediately recognise in orrder to avoid being shooed away in favour of the next one that ticks that box. So in essence, if Bowie had done Station to Station in the current musical environment, people would’ve glanced at it, would say, “hey, this is not Ziggy Stardust and what I like”, and gone to the next artist who did resemble that kind of sound. From this standpoint the new Ikons album, a self-titled one, does raise some interesting questions. … Continue Reading
The Mary Onettes
The Mary Onettes have made my job easy; I could do away with mentioning how their name reminds me of Earthbound (that SNES game from the 90’s) and just cut the whole review down to one sentence: Do you like The Cure? Yes? Then you’ll probably like The Mary Onettes.
Annoyingly that ‘probably’ means I have to elaborate and actually write a proper review, damn. Hailing from Sweden, The Mary Onettes are essentially an 80’s inspired pop band, taking their cues from gloomy acts such as Echo and The Bunnymen, and of course, The Cure.
However, where The Cure were known to produce the occasional upbeat tune, such as ‘Lovecats’ and ‘Friday I’m In Love’, this band maintain a steady level of mediocre melancholy in their sound, making them great for sad funeral moments in low budget films and sitting rocking gently in the dark, but not good for much else.
While Islands is without doubt a well performed and polished album, it just lacks energy, with each track agonisingly dragging into the next, like the horror that was the Freddie Krueger TV series (although The Mary Onettes could probably benefit from the excitement of having razor sharp fingers).
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