New music from Tkacuk, Le Maine, Anna-Lena Winter and Akaba

Tkacuk
Tkacuk – “Borders & Land”
On his upcoming EP “Borders & Land” Tkacuk wages war agains the dark powers of prejudice and hate that are spreading all over Europe now. The title track here below is the first shot and turns out to be a bright, hopeful song about wiping away the illusions of nationalism. It’s easy to start singing along to this one.
Le Maine – “Daughter of a King”
Le Maine doesn’t hold back on anything in the song “Daughter of a King”. It’s a classic rock ballad with extra everything which explodes in a chorus of filmepic proportions. To support their dramatic music the band has created dark stories which their upcoming debut-EP “Arte” will tell us more about. The song has a beautiful melody which is unique enough, and catchy, but still I miss one thing in the song to make it reach all the way to give those enjoyable shivers in the middle of the most dramatic parts. It’s the lead vocals where they have chosen to embed it a bit too much in vocal harmonies and dubs, right there in the parts when you need it to be the strongest. It’s still a great track, though, no doubt about it, and it will be interesting to hear the EP where they are heading with this.
Anna-Lena Winter – “Raw”
Anna-Lena Winter has released four albums before with the band Winter. Now she’s has collaborated with Håkan Svensson and Håkan Nyberg from Nationalteatern to create her first solo album “Raw”. And it really feels raw, with a sound that is to some extent inspired by Black Keys, but where we’ve also heard these kicked-speaker-membrane-distortion guitars from Pär Edwardsson before, who also happens to be one of the producers on this album, together with Håkan Svensson. It’s a quite varying and dynamic album with songs like these two catchy melodic tracks here below, to the heavy, glamrock-sounding “Everybody Dance” to the beautiful, minimalistic “Tell Me It’s a Lie” and a lot more to discover on this album that grows with each listen.
Akaba – “94”
Finally a song with the duo Akaba, a duo consisting of Pineforest Crunch singer Åsa Carild and Tobias Ljungkvist from Reminder and Two Times the Trauma. They’re releasing the debut album on the 30:th of October, “The Rust Within”, and the first single from the album, “94”, is out now: