Andreas Lundgren

September 12, 2008 at 5:10 am

Andreas LundgrenAndreas 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

Miss Allena

September 5, 2008 at 8:00 am

Miss AllenaAbout voices then. There are singers you admire and who impress you by their sheer power and/or range, and/or technique – the vibrato, that awesome wailing…but whom you never quite manage to embrace because they lack something else, something less easy to define, if it’s not simply enough the feeling I’m fumbling for, it’s as if they know better than most how to do it but never really grasped the why, so to speak (Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Carola, Tommy Körberg, although these examples are only generally valid and are of course based entirely on my own personal listening; the listener not being altogether unimportant in the field of song and music, after all it’s in hers or his ears and head it’s all happening, or not happening if you will…)

Anyway, on the other side we find those singers most voice coaches would regard hopeless, or “storytellers” rather than singers, but who according to their fans are the really stylish ones, because they sing with so much more than diaphragm and lungs and vocal chords, artists that in an instant can lose themselves in the words and almost mystically make them live. No matter where they went the night before they always instinctively know why they’re singing and therefore can’t ever fail (Dylan, Björk, Lundell, Hellström; well yes I know they too stumble every now and then but allow me some generalization, footnotes are so dull).

Then a few rare voices just are all nice and natural, voices to somehow lean back and heal in, more about hunches and identification than power or impression; it’s not as if you know them – you are idiotically sure that you do.

There it is, I believe I’ve managed to nail some small part of the fascination I’ve felt ever since I first heard Miss Allena a few years back. We’ve never met but she’s my best friend and my sister. Welcome to the family!

Here are two of my favourites, one in that inimitable missallenish swenglish, and one with lyrics by Nobel Prize winner Pärre Lagerkvist, who in my mind finds his final interpreter here. And don’t forget now to enjoy those ingenious minimalistic arrangements as well!

Var är den djupa glädje som jag söker?
By the Water

Visit Miss Allena and listen some more:

Miss Allena on Myspace

Victoria Lagerström

September 2, 2008 at 7:32 pm

“Heaven Sent”, the new album from Victoria Lagerström, is fascinatingly beautiful and filled with different emotions. It strikes me how big the sound is, even though the arrangements are basic.

It also strikes me how carefully each song has been produced, where each track has it’s own characteristics and feeling. The arrangement is created after the principle “less is more” and guided by what the song has to offer, and not according to a common band setup.
And on top of this, Victoria’s soft soul-jazz voice, like a young to midaged Joni Mitchell.

I’m sure you’ll understand what I mean when you listen to the songs below. “Heaven Sent”, the title track, has a latino feeling, a soft jazzy cornet, a kind of desert ambience which leads into a jazz-pop chorus, like a reply to a later Mecano.

And then there is the wonderful “If I Say Yes” where the jazz influence feels stronger and the relationship with Joni Mitchell shines through even brighter. A soft beautiful saxophone guides the listener from the first chorus to the end.

Listen and enjoy:

Heaven Sent
If I Say Yes

Visit Victoria:

Victoria Lagerström’s home page

Victoria on Myspace

Equality

August 19, 2008 at 12:00 pm

Equality“Nu vaggas tång av gammal dyning” (“Now seaweed is rocked by old swell”, or something to that effect)… Equality from Linköping is generally curious and boundless as they say, with a catalogue playing rather furiously with the “genres” but right here&now I`m really just hungup on this little one. Perfect swedish kind of jazzy ballad like a brittler and more intimate and also funkier Staffan Percy…I thought at first, before realizing that despite of all the well administered and managed heritage he’s of course completely his own. Summer contemplation de luxe! “Rain rain washing the salt from my wound…”

Kobben

Equality on Myspace

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