Marcus Wallner puts the microphone on the piano, sits down and plays and sings. Afterwards he adds the choirs. As simple as that. When I ask him why he hasn’t aimed for a bigger sound with a better production he answers that he’s tried that, but that inte the end he likes this way the best.

And the songs and the sound create a special feeling, I agree with that. Like a small choir gathered around a piano singing modern hymns in front of us. Less is more? Judge for yourseld in a couple of songs from his latest EP, “A Needlework”.

You can find Marcus on his Myspace page.

Row, Dear
Hookless

That the band Heart-Sick Groans is inspired by american folk music and Bob Dylan is nothing new, and I’ve written about them before. The singer in  Heart-Sick Groans, Johan Brännström, takes it one step further though, as he digs his way straight down into the folk soil, in his new EP “My God How the Money Rolls In”.

To really create the right feeling for this music, the EP is even recorded on an old tape recorder.

You can listen to the EP and Johans earlier works on his Bandcamp page. You can also find Johan Brännström on Myspace. Heart-Sick Groans’ music is available on their Bandcamp page.

Born On Your Birthday
Come See Me Sometime

If you’ve got a blog named Meadow Music you shouldn’t of course miss a band called Meadowland. Especially since Meadowland are on their way to release their debut album on the 30th of November, “Harbour”.

Meadowland is like candyfloss for the ears. And it fits perfectly to put a blanket on a piece of the meadow, lean back, eat some grapes and enjoy this soft singer-songwriter music. CSN&Y are there and Simon and Garfunkel are invited as well as Damien Rice and lots of others.

Sometimes they show us more pop inspiration, but it blends smoothly with the rest and we lilt the the choruses all the way home. It’s a good and varied album that grows with each listen and I’d say that it’s their best so far.

Enjoy a couple of songs here below and visit Meadowland on their blog, their Myspace page or on Facebook. If you can’t wait until the 30th you can listen to their earlier works on Spotify.

Whitby Jet
Silence

Talking about voices that moves into new areas, I thought it would be a nice idea to present Karl Buhre’s solo project Ocean Beach.

Normally you can find Karl Buhre in the band Alouatta, which I wrote about a while ago here on the blog. It’s a big leap between Alouatta’s frenetic, punky rock to this singer-songwriter music, which brings us back to the early seventies in the company of CSN&Y and Joni Mitchell. He present a couple of great compositions, which you can listen to on Ocean Beach’s Myspace page.

About Alouatta, I’ve been told that they are in the studio now, recording new tracks for upcoming releases, and an album debut is being planned, a project that goes by the name “Run Tiger, Run”.

After the recordings Karl will again concentrate on Ocean Beach, and is hinting that the musical direction may change a bit. Here’s “Summer Trail”:

Summer Trail

Even if Jesper Norda has named his latest album “April Archives Collection No 1” I feel that it was perfect for me to get into his music now, in the beginning of the autumn. Beutiful, safe, a little lonely, disquieting, calm but yet dramatic.

The first track “Tomorrow You’ll Be Forgiven…” is magic to me. A Satie-sounding minimalistic piano figure, a simple, but beautiful song melody, Jesper’s dark, low-voiced vocals and “…but tomorrow you will have your teeth knocked out” which feels just like a hit right in the solarpexus, in the middle of the warm safe ambience.

“April Archives Collection No 1” is a compilation of three of Jesper Norda’s earlier EP:s, 12 songs with only Jesper and his piano and sometimes a simple drum machine. No excesses, as simple as possible, but it never gets uninteresting. The melodies are not revolutionizing but set inside my head, both from the vocals and the piano figures. I hear David Sylvain, Leonard Cohen, Roger Waters in different contexts, but in the end his own unique character.

You can find Jesper Norda on his site or on Myspace. You can also listen on Spotify.

Tomorrow you´ll be forgiven but tonight you will have your teeth knocked out
Lets go to a place infected with truth and resist with all our hearts