They took their time to deliver their debut album. After having released some excellent singles during a couple of years, Anyone for tennis finally released the record “Welcome Midlife Christ” in the end of Summer. They serve us 14 songs, which may seem a lot for an album, but it works great here for the band. It gives them space both to continue to excel with their energic, american-sounding rock and to explore some other areas, like for example stunning pop ballads, blues or acoustic ambience. If I also add an exquisite sense of melodies and of course also Martin Norström’s strong vocals we have an album that certainly meets the high expectations I had before and even more. I can’t refrain from playing “Everything Is Falling Down” again, so here are four tracks from the album:
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 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 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.
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:
The duo Livboj, Jonny “Calzone” Klingvall and Jonas Borgström, released their debut EP “Opium Twist” last week. Four great indie-songs in Swedish. Here’s the title track:
Feivel, whom we’ve met before as Elin Hörberg in the Malmö band Skilla, has released her second single, “Friend”. The song is taken from the upcoming EP “Feivel”.
Sudakistan is a quintet where most members have Southamerican roots. “Rabia” is their first single from their upcoming debut album, a song where they let loose their mix of latino rhythms and garage rock.
The Danish-Swedish trio Black Light White Light are on their way with a new album. It’s called “Gold Into Dreams” and will be released on October 6th. In Spring they showed the first taste of the album, “High Like a Hurricane”, and recently the second one, the single “Operators”. The sound is a bit harder and rawer now compared with the earlier songs, but I certainly still recognize their style which breathes of brit pop just as well as of psychadelia.
As I already have one foot in Denmark I might as well take the full leap over and present the Danish band The Wands. In November their debut album comes out, an album which has been preceeded by this excellent single, “Sound of the Machine”. With their nice fuzzy guitar they takes all the way back to sixties and the original psychadelia.
The Janitors, hailing from Stockholm have just launched their new EP “Evil Doings of an Evil Kind”. Here we meet a much darker and harder psykadelia than the one from their colleagues above. It’s often hypnotic and monotone in a large echoing room which they fill with explosive noise rock and razor sharp melodies that cut through the massive guitars. The song themes go hand in hand with the music like for example with greed in “Greed” and the growing ultra right movements in Europe, which the band comments on in the song “Here They Come”.
Long time no see. It’s been more than one and a half month since I posted. As I’ve been out on the road in Europe most of the time, without Internet connection, I haven’t even listened to music for quite some time. In the end I got such an abstinence that I just had to find a place with w-fi, put my headphones on, put on a playlist with new music and just dwell in this for a couple of hours. Probably my best listening experience this year. I guess I had to rest my ears for a while, find some new motivation and lust to take on a new music season.
So, let’s start today.
I have told you before about the duo Dödens Dal’s project about inviting singers to put lyrics on and perform songs from the duo’s last album. First up was Jenny Wilson with “Under lager av is” and now it’s Peter Morén’s (Peter, Björn & John) turn. The song is called “Måste det vara så?”, the original title is “Över fältet, mot ljusen”, and it’s another hit in this interesting project.
It’s unusual to meet songs in this way, first as an instrumental, and then as someone else’s interpretation lyricswise. I can compare it with reading a book, creating your own images, and then looking at the book-based movie, where you have to struggle with mixing your own interpretation with the director’s. An added song track can of course change a song to something completely different, but what happens here is that both Jenny and Peter add another layer to the ambience that’s already there, but at the same time add images and places that wasn’t there when I listened originally. Next month they will release an EP with more artists and songs, which will be exciting to explore.
Here’s a fresh single release from the duo Grapell. “Shaping My Love” is wonderful, warm soul pop with a touch of the eighties. The song is taken from the EP “Friends”, to be released on the eighth of October.
Alexandria is a band from Stockholm I wrote about last year, when they sent me the rehearsal room-recorded “Whatever”. Now they are signed to a label and have recently released their debut EP “Laid Back Forever EP”, about a week ago. The earlier song “Whatever” is there in the company of three other songs, in a sound that feels like indie pop inspired by the seventies, a bit in the direction of psychadelia, with distanced vocals and dreamy harmonies. There is a common denominator in the sound and the harmonies between the songs, but they vary the rhythm in an interesting way; from the nice soul-tasting groove in the title track to a more straight rock beat in “Secret Beach”, with it’s hooky guitar figure. A fun and great debut to listen to. Here’s “Another Station” from the record together with the video to “Secret Beach”.
Luha is the name of a Swedish-Filippino artist, who recently released her second single, “Heart”. It’s a light and pleasant pop-track with a percussion-heavy chorus that makes me think of Iida. Sung with a bright and delicate voice the reminds me of Frida Sundemo.
Last year Noras Falcon, or Elin Rosenberg which is her real name, released the debut EP “The Spark”. One of the songs from the EP, the duet with Staphan O’Bell “Kiss the Night”, made it to my “Best of 2013”-list, but it could just as well have been this song, “Sing It Out Loud”. Her new video to the song gave me the opportunity to play it again:
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