Dream pop Jon Rinneby calls his music. And I think that’s a good description of the music. It’s dreamy, airy and slightly sleepily melancholic.

This is about Jon’s latest album “I’m In a Sideshow”, a 12 track album, that was released this spring/summer. The entire album can be downloaded from his home page.

To me this is pure pop music at it’s best, according to my definition. And pop music to me is first and foremost about melodies, melodies that flows like honey into my head when I listen. This happens all the time as I’m listening to the songs on “I’m In a Sideshow”. “Simple” melodies, so obvious and pleasant, but not recognisable from other songs. It’s just Jon Rinneby and it’s great.

The melodies are whistled, sung, crooned, sometimes almost whispered. On a couple of tracks (20 Million People, Let’s Dig a Hole) he’s helped by Maria Andersson and on a couple of other tracks, Karin Verbaan (Do You Still Need Me, Butterfly) which brings a nice contrast into the songs. Karin is also doing backing vocals on other tracks. It’s in some way minimalistic but still not, and often the verses lead into big sounding refrains with nice backing vocals. Well, I think it’s best you listen for yourself.

Dreampop according to Jon Rinneby:

Do You Still Need Me?
20 Million People
If You Want Me To Stay
I’m In a Sideshow

Download the album from Jon Rinneby’s home page

Jon Rinneby on Myspace

Juka Soma has a very special voice. A voice I know I’ll be able to recognise among thousands of other voices. And he uses it in a way that reminds me of old heroes like John Hiatt, Van Morrison, Willy de Ville and Curtis Mayfield. He doesn’t follow some kind of template, he just let the song and the feeling of the song pass through his voice. It’s human and warm.

Musically I find myself in the States, where the influences from the mentioned heroes is recognised in the songs to various degrees. The lyrics have a personal feeling and it feels very close. It’s beautiful, with nice melodies that lead into refrains that hook me up the first time I hear them.
This is feelgood rock with a big touch of soul, a type of soul that the masters from before delivered.
It makes me happy to listen to Juka Soma. I hope you will feel the same.

Richest Man Alive
Stay In the Circus

Visit Juka Soma:

Juka Soma on Myspace

Soul Seduction is a real rock’n’roll band that gives me flashbacks from the era of classic rock bands and hard rock bands from the seventies. It’s tight, well played and a lot of energy.

A band like this needs a singer as a channel for all this energy and luckily for Soul Seduction, Evami Ringqvist is behind the microphone. She manages to do this and also add a real dose of soul and blues to the mix. And when she uses her extra overdrive you feel it in the stomach.

Soul Seduction started out in 2006, but has already managed to play live on a number of bigger scenes. Last year the played at the Peace & Love festival in Borlänge, voted for in a competition at Jamma.se. This year they made the finals in the Urband-Playground competition 2008. So take the opportunity so see them if they come to your town!

Here you can listen to 4 songs from their latest album:

Blood Dead Beautiful
Down
Wild Ones
WNM

Soul Seduction på Myspace

Andreas Lundgren comes back to us as “Bad Buddha”, his latest album which is free for download on his home page. It is an album that’s rich on influences from various sources; rock, blues, folk music, funk and a lot more; straight into a fantastic mix that I can’t describe in any other way other than that it’s Andreas Lundgren. I’m drawn into the songs with their driving beat, a beat that runs through everything in different ways.

I find an open Andreas, and it feels like a journey into the dark and out to the light, from separation to longing for love. And all the songs performed with Andreas special voice, a relaxed, yes, cool voice that really comes through.

To me, this is absolutely one of the best albums I’ve heard this year and I can only congratulate you for being able to download the entire album from his home page. There you will also find two of his earlier albums “Grande Cocktail Magic” and “Green Loafers & Husky Freaks”, also free for download.

Four songs from “Bad Buddha” to enjoy and download:

Breathing Gas
Purple Wonderlight
What the Hell
Moondance Woman

Andreas Lundgren’s home page “Banned From USA”

Andreas Lundgren on Myspace

I have never really felt for the CD as a physical product. To have the feeling for holding it, looking at it, open and discover it. I have never been anywhere close to the excitement I felt when I finally held a wished-for vinyl in my hands. Nostalgic illusions? Maybe.
And even if it doesn’t explain the big changes in the music industry, it meant that I rather painlessly could lose the plastic in favour of harddrives, memory cards and web streams.

But a couple of months ago, when I got my hands on Pär Edwardson’s CD “Bodybuilding – but with centimetre”, that “hold in a physical album”-feeling awoke. Wisely the ugly transparent plastic plastic cassette had been replaced with a hardboard cover. On the album front the protagonist himself was portrayed in a photo taken in his youth, with hair style and clothes typical from those days. When I opened the album I found a small collection of similar photos from the same era with names below each. “Is that really Kee Marcello? No, surely not, or…” Simply put, a small photo album. On the right there was a pocket containing a folded mini poster. Unfolded it showed me the origin of the album title “Bodybuilding – but with centimetre” and on the back side of the poster, all the lyrics. A mini adventure to sum it up.

It was also an adventure listening through the record. Even though I had listened to Pär Edwardson before, it was somewhat of a surprise for me. I expected a record filled with his great pop songs, late-Beatles-melodic with his special touch and sound, unique in themselves and that really stick in my mind after listening a couple of times. Subtle, satirical lyrics where some frases together with melody form good hooks. And sure, I found those songs, but also a lot more than that: lo-fi blues, hard rock (with Kee Marcello Marcello as guest), a couple of covers (Thunderbolt, Whip It!), interludes, a wiener waltz, long songs, short songs. And also these fantastic pop songs I knew from before. Confusing? Hardly. Instead it formed a whole that I haven’t grown tired of, held together with the feeling Pär Edwardson wanted to convey when he created the album. A real album!

Even if physical containers of music may be on their way out, I do hope that artists continue to create albums. Albums where there is space for more than the most direct songs. Chapters, timebound or not, of the musicians’ artistry which we can read through and come back to and experience. When it comes to Pär Edwardson, I happen to know that he is working on a new album, and I’m grateful for that.

Listen to three tracks from the album “Bodybuilding – but with centimetre?”:

God’s Greatest
Coffee Drops and Lemon Curd
Into the Dark

Visit Pär Edwardson:

Pär Edwardson på Myspace

Pär Edwardson på Allears