Here’s Tåget till Wroclaw, a four member strong band hailing from Fagersta, who recently released the new single “Blunda inte mer”. They have achieved a quite sweet basic rock sound with driving toms and echoing guitars where they with clenched fists tell us how they look at what’s happening in the world. Earlier the band has released the EP “Vakna nätter & trötta dagar” 2014 and after that a couple of singles, which you can listen to on Spotify and other platforms.
It’s been a couple of years since I wrote about the duo Grapell. Meanwhile they have released some new singles where “Arrow” last year became a hit for them. That opened the door to the American market with the help of an American label, and the new single “Every Time” was also premiered on Beats 1 with Zane Lowe. This song is the second single from their upcoming EP “Love Chamber”, to be released on September 30th. Here they slow down the pace even further and make the time stop för a moment as Emil Erstrand picks out his most beautiful falsetto in this soul-tinged piece of cotton pop.
In March she stood out with the most beautiful and the most moving song during Spring, “Vi vet ingenting”. Now Anna Jadéus has released the album “Håll ut” where the song has found its home. Already on the cover, with the album title and the rainbow-coloured umbrellas, she sends a message to the bedgrudged, the misunderstood and the lonely ones. It’s not a record full of fighting slogans, though, if anyone believes that, it’s rather an emotional and personal story from the inside, full of contrasts.
There’s a musically playful side with rythmic ukuleles as the base, where we all soon sing along in for example the title track. But there’s also a more serious side where time stops for a moment in in songs like “En sån som vill ha mer” or “Mörkret drar förbi”, painfully beautiful songs full of vulnerability and warmth. With small means she slowly builds up the songs into emotional and powerful anthems and throws us between melancholy and joy, but with a final message of hope, love and inner strength. The final song “Kommer vi klara oss?” (transl. “Will we make it?) is a journey which ends right there, but as the track has ringed out with beautiful euforia, it still leaves a worrying echo in my mind: are we all really going to make it in the end if we can’t learn to accept every person for who she is?
The duo Desperat K, whom I presented less than two years ago, released the single “Solo” a few weeks ago. Like before they serve us colours from the eighties with postpunk-vibing synthpop, here in a song that pulsates with melancholy in the dark Uppsala night. It grows into an epic, beautiful synth ballad, in a similar style as their first track “Östermalm”. Fortunately they have just started working on their first full length album, which we will be able to enjoy some time next year.
When Jade Ell looked through the belongings her biological mother left behind, a mother she didn’t grew up with, she found a note which read: “Buy her an accordion – I think she wants to play…”. Many years later after the note was written, Jade had bought not just one accordion but several, and it was through some tones on the accordion the idea to her new single “The Riddle” was born. Rather fitting the song is about life as a riddle, a mystery we’re trying to solve where the solution inevitably escapes us by urging us out on new unknown journeys all the time.
And the song also serves some mystique in a suggestive, dreamy atmosphere emphasized by Stefany June’ reading of the lyrics while Jade’s vocals turns into a reinforced echo of the internal monologue. The song is fringed with dark synth lines, sunny strings and dramatic toms, but there is also a feeling that remains unresolved all through the track, which pushes us towards upcoming events, like in a soundtrack. And that goes hand in hand with her intention of the forthcoming tracks, which she describes as various scenes from her life, where this song sets the ambience.
Jade Ell has earlier released three solo albums and has been involved in several projects, both as a songwriter and as an artist. She is also the singer in the art rock band Xanima which I have written about before.
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