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.

Forest - Forest

Forest are a mysterious, Stockholm-based three-piece band whose self-titled debut album emerges on Service – the Swedish label behind Jens Lekman and Studio, amongst others. Though their music lacks Lekman’s attention to detail or The Tough Alliance’s immediacy, there’s a combination of creeping pop melodies, imagination and outright weirdness here that makes their debut a disarming, disorientating and intriguing listen.

One of the more obvious comparison points for Forest’s music comes not from their native Scandinavia, but over the Atlantic Ocean in Baltimore – the Waltz-like pace of their songs and reverb-heavy production recalls Devotion-era Beach House at their most sedate, though Forest are an altogether chillier proposition. In place of Victoria Legrund’s powerful voice is a more androgynous male vocal, whose lyrics are vague and usually obscured.

The result is that the music can occasionally stray from blissful escapism into easy listening territory – in fact, this may be one of their influences, as New Age atmospheres permeate some of the songs and the melodies sound like they’re lifted from long-forgotten 1950s radio hits. You could even point to elements of children’s music in Forest’s sound – the almost ever-present pulsing and swirling organ makes me think of a fairground, albeit a fairly ghostly and sinister one. Their naivety may be difficult to swallow at first (their press release describes them as “strangely untouched by postmodernity”), but there’s an edge hidden under this music’s smooth surface.

For example, opener ‘Out In The Streets’ conjures up images of snow-covered, deserted roads, though the lyrics (and you have to listen closely) immediately undermine the idyllic picture: “You don’t do crazy things anymore/Meeting a friend of yours won’t break you like before”. It also includes one of the most sinisterly-delivered lines about taking a bath I think I’ve ever heard: “You feel normal now… And cleeeean”.

This strange atmosphere permeates the rest of the record and becomes more apparent on repeated listens – ‘Just One Day’ turns out to be a gorgeously-soundtracked break up, with the chorus of “Is it really just one day/Since you took your things away?” delivered with a whispered, melodramatic intensity of someone like Perfume Genius or Jamie Stewart. Similarly, the simple melodies and layers of reverb on ‘Vivienne’ disguise something altogether more sinister, while the insistence on ‘We Can Go Away’ that “there’s no problem” ends up sounding like wishful thinking.

In the end, whether you enjoy Forest’s debut album will depend firstly on whether you’re immediately turned off by the dreamlike, naïve sound they’ve created. After this, it also requires a certain amount of perseverance – the lyrics are heavily disguised and melodies reveal themselves at a glacial pace. Underneath it all, as with fellow Swedes Jens Lekman and The Tough Alliance for example, is something altogether more complicated and intriguing – you just have to look for it.

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.

This EP is a lot more solemn and downbeat in tone compared to the recent The Wild Hunt LP, released earlier this year. These five songs saunter forward on lightly skipping finger picked chords, never even thinking about launching into some of the full voiced, six string hammerings of that album. It’s a delightfully restrained affair; a textbook example of doing more with less. Even the crunch of the electric (gasp!) ‘Dreamer’ moves languidly, allowing his the cinematic sweep of his increasingly epic song writing to take centre stage. Every so often, you get the faintest suggestion of something buried in the mix – could’ve been a string section, could’ve been guitar feedback – but it’s snatched away in an instant. Distractions are minimal; it’s just you and him: his engaging vocal drawing you deeply into the songs.

His lyrical prowess isn’t confined to its poetic quality, handsome though it is. Further than that, it’s Matsson’s ability to bend his syllabic rhythms to the will of the songs’ melodies which is so striking. The tiny lyrical snippet of “a little river to the golden ground” from the opening song’s chorus, to take just one early example, skips lightly across its hook with grace – a hook born as much from its rhythm as its melody. He’s the master of knowing exactly which rhythms, phrasings and sounds compliment his breezy melodies most effectively; facilitating frequent shifts from the simplistic to the sublime. Similarly, his delivery is golden: the big push of “you’re the light over me” (a ham-fisted line on paper) is delivered on ‘Dreamer’ with a unique sense of drama lying somewhere between longing and resentment, affording the lyric a heightened sense of personality. It’s this effortlessly emotive quality, and his instinctual ability to find the best form of delivery, that make the Dylan comparisons perfectly well founded.

The Wild Hunt was a fantastic enough LP, full of jaunty numbers and upbeat hooks, but, perhaps purposefully, this clutch of tracks feels like a shift down in gear, a step back, and an attempt at sober self evaluation. The results are haunting, but there’s no diminishment of Matsson’s charismatic warmth; when he asks “oh my Lord, why am I not strong?” the question is mournful, not defeatist. As exciting as everything we have already heard from The Tallest Man On Earth has been, Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird promises deeper shades of affecting tenderness to come.

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?

Well, let’s pinpoint the difference between that cover and this new material. ‘Who Do You Love?’ – (that’s the third time I’ve typed it. I trust that you’ve been rewarded by a curiosity to find it on Spotify by now) – was pretty unambiguously a pop record; hinging on a clearly defined structure and boasting a real stinger of a chorus. But clearly, when it comes to writing their own stuff, the members of Museum of Bellas Artes owe more to the club scene than the pop charts. The chugging beats and stabbing synth riffs remain intact, but these tracks unravel with a more sprawling sense of fluidity compared to the verse-chorus focus of that early single. Sure, standout track ‘Watch The Glow’ sports an enchanting enough little chorus, but it’s ultimately a different beast altogether: more hypnotic trance than hand-clap sing along. So, what’s the answer to that make or break question? Well, if you came back for the songs, you’re liable to be disappointed. But if you came back for the beats, you’ll find plenty to like here.

The rhythm section on this EP provides a brilliant hybrid of the mechanical and the organic; boasting both the huge sounds of programmed beats as well as the vibrancy of live execution. In this respect, they call to mind LCD Soundsystem – creating engrossingly textural dance music, but with the feel and sound of live instrumentation throughout. The ascending bassline of ‘Days Ahead’ slinks upwards in tried-and-tested fashion, but avoids stagnancy thanks to endearingly imperfect guitar and synthesiser tones, invigorating the sound with naturalistic vitality. We hear the work of a garage band, rather than the work of GarageBand.

Which brings us on to the second biggest question we need to ask about this band: are those fucking panpipes we’re hearing? Answer: yes, or it certainly seems so in any case. And this is where Museum of Bellas Artes differentiate themselves entirely from a band like LCD Soundsystem. Murphy may use a cowbell from time to time, but Bellas Artes take a far more strident kitchen sink attitude – panpipes, one off guitar riffs, joyous handclaps, and other textural flourishes playfully enrich the band’s sound at every turn. The music is certainly energising then, but the formlessness of the vocal melodies and the shallowness of the hooks make for a significant Achilles heel. Museum of Bellas Artes are a band who have brilliantly fleshed out their sound; now all they need to do is to incorporate the melodic and structural focus of that first single, and then these ladies should be cranking out some seriously exciting dance songs.

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.

While her still delicate and earnest vocals are a far cry from the powerful lungs of 1970s disco divas, and the instrumentation leans more heavily on melodica than saucy horn sections, the band’s conviction in the direction they’ve taken with this newest record is totally convincing. If its original disco influences are personified by the John Travolta figure taking assuredly to the illuminated dancefloor, WYWH is propping up the bar, sloping off for a cigarette and shuffling quietly with its friends in the corner; it’s still quintessentially a part of disco, if not the part we’d first think of.

From the first echoing notes of ‘Good Evening,’ the sound is tight, almost immaculately glacial. Rooted in simple hypnotic drumbeats, equally uncomplicated melodies rise up and blend almost imperceptibly to create beautiful, haunting pop songs. ‘All Day’ is perhaps the closest the album comes to its ‘70s roots, with its synths, and beats with more than a whisper of the Gibb brothers. But it’s pulled out of being derivative with a heavy pan-pipe part, and lyrics less ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and more ‘Stayin’ Awake’: “We’re gonna stay in bed/All day, all day, all day.” There’s even a track that strays towards power ballad territory, though ‘Oh My Love’, at just shy of three minutes and with a xylophone part as well as electric guitar licks, is saved from such terrors by its sincerity and lack of self-indulgence.

We do slip into more familiar territory towards the end of the album; penultimate track ‘Sing For Me’ wouldn’t sound out of place on Hey Trouble, and it does show that the band’s strengths lie elsewhere. This is demonstrated by the album’s final foray into disco with its title track. With its charmingly infectious and melancholy chorus, it brings the record to a triumphant close.

In terms of the album title, which alongside the band currently requesting fans’ favourite summer snaps, there’s a firm nod towards the current trend for heartbreaking nostalgia in PR campaigns (take a bow, Arcade Fire and your people), but also a statement of palpable confidence in this album. The Concretes are proud of what they’ve done here, and where they’ve ended up as a band, and rightly so.  This is a surprising return for them, and a thoroughly successful one.

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.

I bloody love Robyn’s singles (Be Mine = TUNE), but I must admit to never having listened to her breakthrough album more than a couple of times all the way through, so I was interested to see how she’d tackle the whole three-releases thing. And while the first of the trilogy is more about exploring emotions that make you want to laugh and cry, frustration and playing around with genres, Body Talk Pt. 2 is more of a return to her dancefloor maven side, with an altogether mixed bag of results.

In parts, it’s pretty great. Both ‘Hang With Me’ and ‘In My Eyes’ are really fun, full of sparkly chords, synth that sounds like it’s ready to start flying and some brilliantly distorted vocals, that signify her move back towards the danceable rather than the wilfully experimental. The acoustic version of ‘Indestructible’ at the end of the record is a masterstroke too – after all the beats and bleeps, it shows off Robyn’s more vulnerable side, and proves that she’s got talent in spades.

Disappointingly, Body Talk Pt. 2 isn’t without its flaws. A lot of tracks sound like they’re there to use up time; case in point being ‘We Dance To The Beat’, which is repetitive to the point of being more effective than counting sheep to send you off to sleep. Or the kind of thing you’d only like if you were off your tits on drugs in a club.

‘Include Me Out’ and ‘U Should Know Better’ try too hard to emulate Robyn’s knack for a catchy interlude as well, with the latter featuring a cameo from Snoop Dogg. It just comes across as an effort to salvage something, rather than something worth taking notice of.

Sadly, I found myself feeling a little bit disappointed with the second volume of Body Talk. The idea of bringing out three albums in a year is a brave concept, but I feel she might have been better off doing just one instead and taking the best songs off the three. Saying that, the third instalment isn’t out yet, so it’s hard to judge. When it’s good, it’s very very good- it’s just a shame that it’s mostly filler rather than killer.

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.

ceo is Erik Berglund’s new musical guise, which could be considered a side project if anyone knew whether The Tough Alliance were going to make another record, and it feels very much like an extension of his previous band’s sound. The songs on debut album White Magic are instantly appealing – Balaeric beats, orchestral touches, disco, modern r’n’b, reggae, samples and live instrumentation are all combined in this bright, sweet collection of songs in a manner that will be familiar to any fans of The Tough Alliance. As ever, it’s unashamedly pop, to the point where it may be just too sugary for many people but, as with Robyn, instant appeal does not necessarily diminish with repeated plays.

The unease that lurked below the bright surfaces of The Tough Alliance’s music is replicated on White Magic (melancholy has always had its place firmly at the centre of popular music, let’s face it) and Berglund adds another pop trope to the mix with ceo – escapism. Lead single ‘Come With Me’ is a case in point – Berglund invites to the reality inside his head in his familiar sing-song voice, ominously asking whether we’d “sacrifice this life to make it real”. His reality remains as inscrutable as ever – you only need to take a look at the video’s weird mix of camp and childlike imagery, or the nonsensical press material – “ceo arises in 1981 and 1891. in 3064 and tomorrow. after ibrahimovic and before nectanebo II”.

Berglund is an expert in obscuring the direct nature of his songs with a certain amount of smoke and mirrors. Though not particularly new, it’s similar to the way Lady Gaga dresses up her songs, though while she craves fame and bad romances, ceo, seemingly, is all about happiness and true love. ‘Oh God Oh Dear’ sways contentedly, while title track ‘White Magic’ effortlessly toes the line between the club and the imagination, spinning in a whirl of samples and beats.

A darkness remains however – ‘No Mercy’ combines Spanish guitars and the sound of swords of being sharpened to document a twisted kind of submissive love, and ‘Love and Do What You Will’ has similar connotations. As ever, sweetness and optimism aren’t what they appear on the surface – every glimpse of light is countered with a hint of darkness. Overall, White Magic feels like another fascinating, weirdly irresistible collection of pop songs from Berglund. If ceo really is everything he’s claimed it to be, it’s also a heady mix of the straightforward and the subversive – a lot of the appeal is winding your way through these twisted mazes he’s created in and around his eclectic, instantly likeable music.

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.

A Krautrock influence is evident at various points during Bandjo – Can being the quickest comparison to spring to mind, particularly in the manner that the tracks run on for at least twice the length of an average pop song but rarely outstay their welcome, as one section replaces another and so on, repetition becomes an irrelevant concern. Great care has evidently gone into the feel of the album, with uncluttered but rich production, luxurious textures and the recurring appearance of the flute, a much-undervalued instrument in rock music. Live drumming also adds to the variation of mood and energy on display here, and the addition of melodic fretwork on the bass raises comparisions to New Order, particularly in their low-key embryonic period between Joy Division and ‘Blue Monday’.

The choppy, low-end synths at the helm of the early minutes of opener ‘Sensu II’ are pure Kraftwerk, with chiming acoustic arpeggios affording the piece a pleasing balance between live instrumentation and electronica. ‘Metropolis’ opens with a bass-driven mystical Eastern soundscape before evolving into a pulsating stomp complete with sparse, baritone chant-like vocals before subsequently stripping itself back to flute-led ambience. When finding themselves locked into a compelling groove, the duo seem eager to move things on rather than letting repetition kick in, challenging (or maybe even frustrating) the listener, but at the same time daringly eschewing accepted structures, formulas and predictability.

Bandjo’s progressive spacerock is largely saved from accusations of cliché by the recurring themes of both scratchy post-punk and the contemporary electronic influence apparent, with trance-like synth motifs used sparingly but effectively at a handful of well-chosen points. ‘There Is Time’ halves the pace of proceedings, a casually-paced dub piece which lingers around unobtrusively before kicking into a colossal rhythm five minutes in and withdrawing into an ocean of pads, tuneful bass, harmonica and acoustic guitars.

If Bandjo has a flaw, it’s that its subtle experimentation and lack of structure allow it to fade into the background with some ease. The absence of cemented hooks with which to identify each track adds to the idea that the album is more than the sum of its parts, and an emphasis on individual tracks isn’t appropriate.  A trippy proposition, perhaps best appreciated in the same circumstances associated with most psychedelic music, Bandjo is hugely adventurous. However, at times it also seems to prioritise texture and mood over memorability, with its more engaging moments not being capitalised on enough. The ambition and attention to detail is to be commended however, and even simply on a production level it’s a minor triumph. A potential slow-burner.

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.

Consumed in one sugary dose it all gets a bit too much, but by listening to it in snatches you can fully appreciate the inventiveness that lies within. Opener ‘Bigger Boulder’ sets a high standard, with its Strokes-like opening riff giving way to razor-sharp guitars while Olausson muses about the peculiarities of love. By using heavy Afro-pop percussion, ‘The Birds Were Singing With All Their Might’ recalls mid-career Talking Heads and elsewhere ‘Kungen’ draws heavily on sixties girl-groups to tell a surreal story about Sweden’s monarchy.

There are crafty little earworms lurking everywhere, but their sheer individual brilliance often gets lost in the overall haze. ‘Early Warnings’, ‘Less Than Thrilled’ and ‘Dust’ are delightful offerings but all three struggle to assert themselves on an album that while not repetitive feels very much like a random collection of (admittedly, very catchy) individual tracks with no overall theme.

Sandwiched in among the pop-punk pick ‘n’ mix are some of the band’s more measured and reflective songs. ‘A Side In Bed’ is a slow burner, gradually adding layer upon layer until Olausson shouts out a list of demands over soft saxophones; album closer ‘Take Your Time’ uses Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D major to convey a feeling of intense longing and even though the lyrics are virtually nonexistent it still packs an emotional punch.

Prior to recording the album the band split with their record label, a move that often results in a change of direction. However, this hasn’t really happened with Love Is All. The familiar sound that served them so well on their first two albums is still present and there are four or five stand-out songs, but that’s just what it is: a collection of singles. In an era where the album, as a concept, is being increasingly thought of as redundant, maybe this approach doesn’t matter. Still, in this case, it seems that the parts are much greater than the whole.

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.

The idea of recognition for example is omnipresent in the album of the Swedes. Every song seems throwback, reminiscent of a certain decade. This recognition, however, is not done in terms of a particular signature sound concerning the band itself, but is from a signature sound of a certain period or genre in a certain time. The album has so much variety in terms of sound and feel that individual songs are more likely to be linked to other movements and bands – it foregoes the concept of Ikons birthing their own distinctive sound.

The first song on the album is ‘Slow Light’, an eight-minute instrumental behemoth that has a harder sounding bass and guitars over which lighter sounds can be heard. It’s a fabulous mixture of a tougher sound, with bursts of contrasting aural sunlight. It took me back to ’80s artists like Romanelli, who also produced the beats juxtaposed with lighter synths.

By the time track four, ‘Imperiet’, arrives, the album’s moved from 80s Italo into the Factory era and namely, Joy Division. Throbbing bass, baritone vocals, a hard sound with some fuzziness to it; every characteristic we now link to that band and to that musical genre is present in the song. Sure, the first track does have its rougher and darker edges, but the juxtaposition with the lighter sounds – sounds out of our current definition of a post-punk sound – make that track sound vastly different from this seemingly Factory-influenced song. Something which might be construed as a problem is that this kind of sound has been done so much by so many bands over the last decade; only the romanticised past suffices.

The other songs on the album similarly defy being grouped together. ‘Guns’, as the name implies, builds on the more Joy Division sound of ‘Imperiet’, with a darker vibe, scorching guitars and less central vocals making it sound pretty rough. ‘Domine’ perhaps is the spoke to which the rest are all hubs. It starts almost ambient-electronic, with the vocals in the background and entirely spoken word – the heavy bass sounds do, however, link it to the somewhat heavier outings on the album.

‘Hawk’, like ‘Guns’, is a rougher and harder-sounding instrumental piece. ‘Seconds’, like the first track, mixes the somewhat heavier sounds with occasional light synths.  ‘Bye’ sounds like Crystal Stilts with its fuzziness and distorted vocals. The first and last track without a name, ‘Untitled’, closes the album on a sort of ambient note.

The question remains, to steal a line from the Jarvis’ BBC6 Radio show: “are they any good?” The variety they show indicates their musicianship, but to make a cohesive album they need to distill and mix their qualities, and add precision. If there’s any consistency on this album it’s the heavy bass, but the way this consistent element is utilised is indicative of this album. In this ‘Slow Light’ it’s a sort of hypnotic beat, but in ‘Imperiet’ it’s by way of that much-emulated Peter Hook bass sound. I do like the variety, and I do like, for example, the mixture of something like ‘Slow Light’ with ‘Domine’, the spoken word one. Though vastly different, they do seem to connect with one another.

Songs evoke a plethora genres to be picked and chosen from as favourites, inevitably meaning that there’ll be elements and songs to become anachronistic about. I see two people talking about Ikons and saying, “oh yeah, I love that one sounding a bit like such and such”, instead of them saying, “I love Ikons, period.” Though on the plus side I think a lot of people will be able to find a track on this they think is very well done, so if only to add to a playlist for shuffle purposes this might prove to be a fruitful listen.

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).

On paper it should all work, flowing orchestral strings, light guitar work and steady percussion, all with smooth, warm production and melodic vocals laid over the top. ‘God Knows I Had Plans’ is a perfect example, mixed to perfection, with lovelorn vocals and a sound softer than air, and it would be great by itself, but with a whole album of samey tracks, it just grates.

So, if you’re not one for the cheer of Christmas, or if you’ve just seen a box of kittens carried by the world’s most adorable monkey run over by a convoy of Coca Cola lorries, then this could be for you. If you still actually have some semblance of warmth in your heart, then there are far better albums out there for you.