There is something captivating, authentic about Le Days, aka Daniel Hedin, which I can’t explain. The first track I heard with Le Days was “Hotspot”, which gave me a sensation of Conor Oberst meets Manu Chao, fascinating and rhythmic. But after having listened to more songs, it seemed like that he wouldn’t be so easy to catch.

It runs off in totally different directions, from acoustic ballads to more anxiety-loaded works, psychadelia and other stuff. I like it, to enter Daniel’s world of music, some lo-fi, no rules, to see, as he says himself, where it will lead. It’s he and his guitar (and some other instruments), naked and nothing to hide behind. It seems to me that he doesn’t wait for the “perfect” take, but he knows when he has put in the right feeling and shows it for us.

You can listen more to Le Days on Myspace.

Listen to and download three tracks:

Hot Spot
Blood Red Heart
I’ve Got a Masterplay, Playing In My Mind

Swedish Shoes is a new duo consting of Ola Angleby and Joakim Näslund. They started directly with the creation of their first EP, where you can listen to a couple of tracks here below.

Naked and with a lo-fi feeling it’s about a guitar, two voices, some handclapping. Beautiful melancholy like in an early sixties duo mixed with the playfulness of  Beautiful South. When it’s naked like this, in the end it all comes down to the songs themselves, what they can give and convey. And I think that the duo has done a really good job here.

Listen for yourself, and if you want to here more songs you can visit Swedish Shoes on Myspace.

Sleep and Eat
Go On Girl

Light, light, like bare feet on a flowering meadow in spring, I hear  Ida Olsson’s bright voice with the piano or guitar play of  Simon Ljungman. I don’t even think I have to listen to the beautiful words to feel a warm breath of spring break through the cold winter that predominate now, at least here in Sweden.

It’s swedish ballads mixed with some feeling of french chansons, especially in the piano based songs. It’s acoustic and naked on their new album “Ida & Simon”.

Ida has released two albums before, both of them in collaboration with Simon, and the latest album was born, in a sense, on Ida’s birthday. She received a gift card from Simon, which said “recording mix and master of your next album”!

Here you can listen to a couple of tracks from “Ida & Simon”, and I just had to add a track from her last album “Andas solsken” (“Breathe Sunshine”) also, “Spara vackra dagar” (“Save beautiful days”). Visit Ida’s site (in Swedish) to read, listen and download more songs. You can also find Ida on Myspace.

Två hjärtan i samma kropp
Vi vet inget om imorgon
Spara vackra dagar

When I saw Sugarcoin live this autumn I got really surprised. The thing is that my already high expectations was surpassed. Simply put it was fantastic. I had listened to a lot of songs from him before, and I had liked them all. But live it was even better!

The main character behind these beautiful compositions is Andreas Nerström. I think that his own description of his sound is rather spot-on:

“The music is written primarily on the guitar. Often it builds upon a single idea which forms some kind of core in a song, an inner soul. It can be some small detail or a strand. Sometimes no more than a rhythm or a string of tones. In extreme cases nothing more than the grating of a dirty steel string. My motivation is to conserve and package that small idea, that original feeling of simplicity and clarity, wherever it comes from. Like if it, in spite of it’s banality, carries the answer to some  big mystery”

To me, Sugarcoin delivers a really beautiful and fragile music loaded with emotions. And with the voice of Andreas on top of this…well, can it be any better? Right now, the second album is out, “A Great Wall of Antagonism”. I don’t know what to say. I have bought about 20 CD:s in my entire life (and it’s not because of downloading or copying of my friends’ records), and Sugarcoin’s second album is one of these. And doesn’t that say it all?

Fortunately you can download here a few of the pearls from the second album, for free. And I’m very happy about that. Because this music should be spread to a lot of people, everywhere! You can listen to more tracks on Sugarcoin’s Myspace page, and on Sugarcoin’s site you can also listen to and download tracks from his first album “A Moment of Weakness”.

Pinnacle
Acidly
I Can’t Stop
Brutal

We all need some breathing space somtimes, a moment where we can sit down and just look out the window, maybe daydream a little, maybe just watch what’s happening outside and just be. I find this space when i listen to Lovisa Samuelsson. Maybe it also helps that two of her songs are called “Andrum” (“Breathing Space”) and “Fönsterplats” (“Window Seat”). :-)

Backed by piano or guitar and sometimes a cello she performs soft, beautiful jazz ballads. Listen here below, and if you’d like to listen to more songs you can visit Lovisa Samuelsson on Myspace. There you can also buy her EP.

Andrum
Drunken Heart Song
Fönsterplats