Even if Jesper Norda has named his latest album “April Archives Collection No 1″ I feel that it was perfect for me to get into his music now, in the beginning of the autumn. Beutiful, safe, a little lonely, disquieting, calm but yet dramatic.
The first track “Tomorrow You’ll Be Forgiven…” is magic to me. A Satie-sounding minimalistic piano figure, a simple, but beautiful song melody, Jesper’s dark, low-voiced vocals and “…but tomorrow you will have your teeth knocked out” which feels just like a hit right in the solarpexus, in the middle of the warm safe ambience.
“April Archives Collection No 1″ is a compilation of three of Jesper Norda’s earlier EP:s, 12 songs with only Jesper and his piano and sometimes a simple drum machine. No excesses, as simple as possible, but it never gets uninteresting. The melodies are not revolutionizing but set inside my head, both from the vocals and the piano figures. I hear David Sylvain, Leonard Cohen, Roger Waters in different contexts, but in the end his own unique character.
Another Nation’s National Anthem, hailing from Stockholm was formed already in 2002 and this spring they released their first official singel, “Save Them From Sorrow”, containing three tracks.
They get their Influences from the nineties alternative grand pop and rock scene, shoegaze and post-rock, and also from contemporary bands like The Arcade Fire, Explosions In the Sky and The National.
Last week Chris Michols Band released their first official album, “Scar Trek”. Two years ago Chris Michols solo released the album “The Long Road”, only digitally, which was downloaded more than 100 000 times on different sites. Parts of that album was later released officially on the EP Fade In in 2009.
The new album continues where the former albums left us, with singer/songwriter with a postgrunge feeling, strong melodies and of course Chris special voice in the foreground. But it contains much more than this. The melodies are there, the hooks, and the postgrunge vibes too, but these vibes have left more and more space for other influences, like folk music, the sixties and indie rock, which is all nicely blended with the rest.
If you’re already a fan you will recognize Chris Michols, but at the same time experience a more varied, strong album. Listen more on Chris Michols Band’s site. Here are two tracks from “Scar Trek”:
That the songwriting and sound of Ellinor Skagegård & 5th Season is influenced by Joni Mitchell and Carole King is noticed. It’s a nice mix of pop, ballads and folk music where Ellinor’s voice in the front is warm, delicate and with a certain feeling of musical.
In the beginning of this summer they released the 13-track debut album “First Time”, which you can listen to on Spotify. You can also meet Ellinor & 5th Season on Myspace.
It’s easy to smile when you listen to the synth pop collective Vampyramiden’s EP “Tåglånet” (”The train loan”). It’s a tale in five parts about a couple of guys that escapes their boring hometown by “borrowing” a train. Told in a naïve and charming way with bizarre elements. Inevitably I come to think about Torsson in the way they sound, with some party ambience, lofi and synths added.
And it’s Vampyramiden’s ambition to deliver these kinds of stories in this format. They have promised a singel on the same theme in the end of the summer and you can keep track of this at Vampyramiden’s Myspace page.
Here are the two first chapters of “Tåglånet” (in Swedish). The following three is available on their Myspace page where you can also download the EP for free.
In 2008 the band Street Fighting Man released their debut singel “Raise It”. And the same summer they entered the studio to record their debut album. And then…nothing.
Until now. The story doesn’t say if they’ve been locked inside the studio since then, but I do know that they have released a new singel from the upcoming album “The Shadow”.
“Learning to Die” is the name of the song, and it’s a great piece. To me it becomes a nice mix of Queen, Supertramp and a big chunk of Bowie in a cool arrangement with beautiful vocals. There is a bonus track also, in quite a different style, so it’ll be very interesting to see later on how the album will sound.
Chris Laney has quite a list of qualifications as a producer and as a songwriter. He’s also a solo artist and in April he released his second album, “Only Come Out at Night”.
He gets help from a number of guests on the album, among them some well-known names like Bruce Kulick (Kiss), Brian Robertson (Thin Lizzy, Mötörhead), Conny Bloom (Hanoi Rocks, Electric Boys), Ian Haugland (Europe) and Zinny Zan (Shotgun Messiah, Zan Clan), which also gives us a hint to what kind of music it’s about. And of course it’s about hard rock, more precisely the eighties’ hard rock.
It becomes Chris’ own special version of the eighties where he, between sticky rock choruses, glammy choirs and guitar solos, weaves in some metallic darkness and agressive energy. All in all an even and strong album, where Chris shows his strength as a songwriter.
I saw him live at Stockholm Rockout the 1st of May, which was one of the best performances on the festival. Obviously more people agreed with me as he will come back for Stockholm Rockout Festival part 2 on the 10th-11th of September.
It’s time to start again after a short summer break. And I begin with Shotgun Language, aka Gustav Berry.
This May he released the single “It Leaves Me Worried”, a song that breathes fifties rock, and earlier this year the album “Nerve”, a collection of songs with the same lo-fi sound, caught on his tape recorder at home, and serves us pop gems, country and fifties rock. A little like if Buddy Holly, Neil Young and John Lennon met in someones home and recorded outtakes for their new album.
Pearl, earlier member of the electronica band Zeitgeist, calls himself Pearl Fiction going solo. He has released his debut single, “The Ruby Fever”, a song that breathes the eighties and Prince. Joining him on this track is Kitty Jutbring from Kitty and the K.
Baron Bane are back with their first release since “Love.Cure.All” last year, the single “Sordid Eyes”. A song where they mix different influences in a cool way. Monster Magnet-guitars that’s interwoven with electronica and it all lifts in a floating pop chorus with some grunge vibes.
Anna Åhman is Birgit Bidder as a solo artist, and this August her debut album “The Life Home”, will be released.
And a really good album it is, with large span of styles and moods. The two first songs “The Life Home” and “Parking Lot Paradise” are that kind of pop songs that’s impossible to ignore and repeat themselves in your mind with their melody hooks.
After that she exhibit a rich gallery from grand orchestral pop to intimate ballads, all sung with a voice that has it’s own character and luster; a somewhat dark blues-souly voice with stains of both attitude and softness.
A year and a half ago I wrote a post on Brian Kramer and his live album from Club Stampen. This time, though, he’s all alone. It’s just about Brian, his acoustic guitar(s) and you. As close and intimate as it gets.
He sneaks away into the Mississippi delta, he takes a tour to Amsterdam, he let the blues take a stroll along childhood lanes and relationships and even have a look at an old pocket watch. It’s naked and straight on and no excessive outbreaks. And just like with the other album, I feel a nice mellow warmth, and especially in the more melodic storytelling songs, I get a feeling of John Hiatt, who also have a special way of spreading warmth around him.
In May Degrees released the EP “Pt III”, and also the predecessors, accordingly named “Pt II” and “Pt I”, was made available on the net.
Basically it’s about a warm, melodious electronica; synth pop with some strokes of indie with messy guitars. Degrees consists of the duo Mikael Jacobson and Rickard Folke, both hailing from the deep forests around Tranås, where they formed Degrees in 2008.
I seldom write about tours in this blog, usually it’s about new releases and new songs. Today, though, I intend to do both.
It’s about Oskar Gyllenhammar and his tour “100 gigs 100 days”, which he started the 17th of May. Just before that he also released a single, a first taste of an upcoming album this fall. You can listen to the song, “Inga roller och manér”, here below.
The tour “100 gigs 100 days” started in the end of May with a number of gigs in Stockholm, and it’s not hard to understand from the name of the tour, that it’s about doing a gig each day until the 24th of August. But it doesn’t stop there; the ambition is to visit each region in Sweden and also visit the neighbouring countries Norway, Denmark and Finland, at least once.
On top of this, Oskar is also engaged to entertain at Café August in Hudiksvall each Thursday during summer. The gigs so far has been quite a variation, from club concerts, to festival gigs, to improvised park concerts.
This fun trip and it’s story is told on a special site for this tour, with film clips, photos and stories. If you want him to come and play, you can contact him on this site. (in Swedish though)
Obliq, which we wrote about a little more than a year ago, have made a series of live studio recordings, from both earlier songs as well as new ones. They filmed the sessions and plan to release a video every month.
Here are “We Come From the Stars”, featuring Annelie, to listen to and download. And below, the latest video, “The Loneliest Figure”. Go to Obliq’s Youtube channel to follow them.
Skadade ljud is a new acquaintance. They started the band last summer, but it really took off this april as they released their first creations out into the open, with a three-track EP.
It’s pop/rock in Swedish, where they paint grand, slightly mellow pictures. And all is told by Daniel Månstråles vocals which gives it all that little extra touch of drama.
My Closest Friend, hailing from Göteborg, released a singel in the end of May, “Air”. They offer two songs with rather different character. “Air” with a heavy post-grunge rock feeling and “Real Time”, lighter with some country vibes in it. I can’t help thinking of R.E.M. as I listen, maybe to some extent because of the vocals.
It will be interesting to see what My Closest Friend will come up with next. You’ll find the band on Myspace and on Facebook. Here are the songs:
In November I wrote about The Open Up and Bleeds. Their debut album is now recorded and ready for launch, but so far there’s no date set for the release.
Of course you get a better view of a band when you can listen to an entire album, but it’s a little hard anyway to catch The Open Up and Bleeds. Makes it even more interesting for me, as I’m served a lot of variation from dirty, messy rock with a heavy drive in high speed, to slower, more tense and dark songs.
The masked rapper Follow Him to the End of the Desert is here with the 21-track mixtape, “Jacksonian March Mixtape”. And there’s quite some material here.
With the help of a number of guests like for example Prop Dylan, Stiko Per Larsson and K-Element, he present a coherent album with a lot of variation. Funk, soul, jazz, rock is mixed into the agressive rap but at the same time there’s a lot of self-distance and humour. Really good this, and I’ll make it this summer’s hip hop favourite.
If you’d like to grab the entire album, it’s available for download, completely free. You can find Follow Him to the End of the Desert on Myspace and on Spotify. Here are two tracks and a video:
Grand Roses was, to say the least, an interesting discovery. This spring they released their third EP “Say It to My Fervent Heart”, and it has become a favourite of mine. To make an attempt to describe their music I’d take a part of Glasvegas and mix it with a dose of attitude from Union Carbide Productions and also a sensation of mellow Americana.
Well, it sounds really good with strong tracks and a singer who strikes the right nerve and has a nice darkness in his voice. Listen some more on their Myspace page and on Spotify.
Their second EP, “The Farm”, is also available on Spotify and on their Myspace page. Here are two songs from “Say It to My Fervent Heart”:
Riff Knives play music in a genre that’s normally not exactly my thing, but nevertheless I was caught by their music. It’s a mix of hip hop, funk and rock with a lot of attitude and cool hooks. They get their inspiration foremost from N*E*R*D but also also from bands like Looptroop, Jurassic 5 and Infinite Mass.
They have released their debut EP, “Rattle For Fame”, which you can listen to on Spotify or on their Myspace page. Here are a couple of tracks:
I got a mail from The Faux Noise that they had produced a new song, “We All Know That Someday We Will Die”. Apparently it’s a cover of a song from a Taiwanese band called Come On! BayBay!. It’s hard to find any pages about them but a Google search showed me a nice pop/singer-songwriter band on Youtube.
But in the hands of The Faux Noise it becomes something completely different. This time a 7 minutes somewhat epic work in the same ambience as before. Fantasy stimulating, dynamic and grand. I can imagine a large conceptual work from these guys in the future, where they really make a journey, or whatetever they will come up with next.
Erik Zettervall doesn’t hold back, it’s Swedish pop with full speed ahead and passion. A good drive, horns, strings that envelopes the music in drama and at the same time it’s melodic pop in Swedish that also feels very Swedish. A little like a Jakob Hellman with adrenaline injections.
The album “Kärlek på liv och död” has been recorded and are to be released during 2010. Here are two tracks from the record:
And finally The Deer Tracks produced a follow-up to the album debut “Aurora”. They did this with the EP:n “Eggegrund” which was released during spring, although only in 1000 hand numbered records.
Eggegrund is a small island outside Gävle, Sweden, which was the place where they recorded the four tracks on the EP, inside a lighthouse on the island. You will recognize The Deer Tracks on the EP, but at the same time they enter new paths, where each track has it’s own direction and character.
Here below you can listen to two of the tracks, where one of them, the tale of the polarbear cat, “Isbjörnskatten,” is the first song they sing in Swedish.
A little more than a year ago I wrote about The Carnivales and their EP “Five of a Kind”. Last month they took another step on their journey by releasing their debut album “While We’re Young”.
With the album they continue with their energetic rock, but widen their scope and add more flesh to the bones. I hear classic rock from the seventies, Hellacopters and also influences from what I’d call melodic rock from the eighties. There’s a lot of ambition and desire in this band and I can really hear that in the music, fronted perfectly by Espen Janson’s vocals.
You can listen to the entire “While We’re Young” on Spotify and can read more about The Carnivales on Myspace.
Here’s the title track and it’s video from the album:
I’ve been praising Youth and Student Travelbefore, and their two earlier EP:s. Now they have released a new one, with the short name “YAST 3″ and I just keep enjoying this band. Partly they change clothes in this EP, as every EP has it’s own sound. This one a little more rough, denser and more grand, but still a beautiful indie. A new thing is also that two of the songs are in Swedish. Here are two tracks:
Orange Earth is the name of the next band. Maybe the band name tells us something of the psychadelia ambitions? And it feels a little psychadelic and a little garage and some indie and shoegaze. You can listen more to Orange Earth on their Facebook page or their Myspace page, where you also can download their EP “Lighthouse”.
The Courage is the name of Jesper Jonsson’s solo project. For two years he’s been working on his debut album and this April it was finally released.
About the album lyrics: “The lyrics for the songs on my first album describes my own metaphysical universe where I use symbols from eastern philosophy, Jungian psychology and noir movies, to tell the story of a small guy lost in a big city full of confused people.”
The music is an exciting mix, where I hear new wave, electro, soul and great pop tunes. On several tracks I can feel the vibes from an experimenting David Bowie. Here are two songs from the album:
On today’s schedule is rock, and then with the Malmö band The Marcel Prostitutes. It’s retro, it’s punkish, full speed ahead, sweat and dirty guitars. Maybe like a heavier, punkier, early Blondie. Here below are two songs to listen to. If you want more you should visit The Marcel Prostitutes on Myspace.
Annika was born in Sweden, grew up in New York and started working as a kindergarten teacher. She met Jon Neufeld, they married and together they started the pop duo Jonka. This year they’ve released their debut album “Slow and Steady Wins the Race”, and you can hear the song “The Nana Song” from the album, here below.
On Jonka’s site you can hear the rest of the songs from “Slow and Steady Wins the Race”.
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Even if Jesper Norda has named his latest album “April Archives Collection No 1″ I feel that it was perfect for me to get into his music now, in the beginning of the autumn. Beutiful, safe, a little lonely, disquieting, calm but yet dramatic.
Another Nation’s National Anthem, hailing from Stockholm was formed already in 2002 and this spring they released their first official singel, “Save Them From Sorrow”, containing three tracks.
Last week Chris Michols Band released their first official album, “Scar Trek”. Two years ago Chris Michols solo released 
That the songwriting and sound of Ellinor Skagegård & 5th Season is influenced by 
It’s easy to smile when you listen to the synth pop collective Vampyramiden’s EP “Tåglånet” (”The train loan”). It’s a tale in five parts about a couple of guys that escapes their boring hometown by “borrowing” a train. Told in a naïve and charming way with bizarre elements. Inevitably I come to think about 
In 2008 the band Street Fighting Man released their debut singel “Raise It”. And the same summer they entered the studio to record their debut album. And then…nothing.
Chris Laney has quite a list of qualifications as a producer and as a songwriter. He’s also a solo artist and in April he released his second album, “Only Come Out at Night”.
It’s time to start again after a short summer break. And I begin with Shotgun Language, aka Gustav Berry.
Pearl, earlier member of the electronica band 
Baron Bane are back with their first release since 
Anna Åhman is Birgit Bidder as a solo artist, and this August her debut album “The Life Home”, will be released.
A year and a half ago I wrote 
In May Degrees released the EP “Pt III”, and also the predecessors, accordingly named “Pt II” and “Pt I”, was made available on the net.
I seldom write about tours in this blog, usually it’s about new releases and new songs. Today, though, I intend to do both.
Skadade ljud is a new acquaintance. They started the band last summer, but it really took off this april as they released their first creations out into the open, with a three-track EP.
My Closest Friend, hailing from Göteborg, released a singel in the end of May, “Air”. They offer two songs with rather different character. “Air” with a heavy post-grunge rock feeling and “Real Time”, lighter with some country vibes in it. I can’t help thinking of 
In November I wrote 
The masked rapper Follow Him to the End of the Desert is here with the 21-track mixtape, “Jacksonian March Mixtape”. And there’s quite some material here.
Grand Roses was, to say the least, an interesting discovery. This spring they released their third EP “Say It to My Fervent Heart”, and it has become a favourite of mine. To make an attempt to describe their music I’d take a part of 
Riff Knives play music in a genre that’s normally not exactly my thing, but nevertheless I was caught by their music. It’s a mix of hip hop, funk and rock with a lot of attitude and cool hooks. They get their inspiration foremost from 
Erik Zettervall doesn’t hold back, it’s Swedish pop with full speed ahead and passion. A good drive, horns, strings that envelopes the music in drama and at the same time it’s melodic pop in Swedish that also feels very Swedish. A little like a Jakob Hellman with adrenaline injections.
And finally The Deer Tracks produced a follow-up to the 
A little more than a year ago I wrote about The Carnivales and their EP “Five of a Kind”. Last month they took another step on their journey by releasing their debut album “While We’re Young”.
I’ve been praising Youth and Student Travel 
Orange Earth is the name of the next band. Maybe the band name tells us something of the psychadelia ambitions? And it feels a little psychadelic and a little garage and some indie and shoegaze. You can listen more to Orange Earth 
The Courage is the name of Jesper Jonsson’s solo project. For two years he’s been working on his debut album and this April it was finally released.
On today’s schedule is rock, and then with the Malmö band The Marcel Prostitutes. It’s retro, it’s punkish, full speed ahead, sweat and dirty guitars. Maybe like a heavier, punkier, early Blondie. Here below are two songs to listen to. If you want more you should visit 
Annika was born in Sweden, grew up in New York and started working as a kindergarten teacher. She met Jon Neufeld, they married and together they started the pop duo Jonka. This year they’ve released their debut album “Slow and Steady Wins the Race”, and you can hear the song “The Nana Song” from the album, here below.
