In the beginning of the Autumn Restless Riot, hailing from Lund and Malmö, released their debut album “Leaving the Circus”. Like they write themselves it’s about indie pop that meets alt-country in ten songs. In many parts the album is loaded with tension, much because of the singer Daniel Engelbertsen’s Conor Oberst-sounding expression with the characteristic anxiety-loaded trembling, where he in the slower songs hangs on to every word and has me glued to the speakers.

I also like the contrasts on the album, where they, for exemple, in the Damien Rice-vibing duet “Waltz of I”, go from the quiet, darkly beautiful to the rough, messy, drum-distorted “Blind Horse” with it’s unruly Aladdin Sane-piano. Another example and favourite is the song “Learn” where Broselids electric piano harmonies paints an Air-sounding atmosphere in the background. An interesting debut, which makes me curious about what they will be up to next. Have a taste here below in two songs.

Restless Riot’s site – on Facebook – on Spotify

Waltz of I
Learn

“The Essential” ususally means that someone collects the best songs from earlier album releases. This is not the case with this album, which in fact is Fleet of Clay’s debut album, but fits in the sense that they have collected the best they have recorded during a few years an made an album out of it. And it also fits with respect to the quality of the songs, because it’s an impressive collection of songs.

The album contains 25 songs with music which first of all has it’s roots in the sixties and the beginning of the seventies. Pop, country, folk with vibes from bands like Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y, Beatles, Kinks and others. It’s a classic production with few overdubs except the main instruments, the vocals and the choirs, and there’s plenty of pleasant guitars and good vocals. It’s a pearl of an album, and the song quality lasts all 25 tracks through, where they varies from classic sixties’ pop to cheeky country to fine-tuned folk pop without losing neither themselves nor the listener. There’s a kind of playful self-convidence on the album, that you would expect from a band that has released three or four albums already.

The men behind Fleet of Clay are the three brothers Knut, Erik and Karl Svanholm. Unfortunately they don’t seem to be that active with the band any longer; Knut is working with his band Lobst and their new album, and that’s as much as I know now. There is a Facebook page, though, and on Spotify you can listen to all songs. Here are two tracks:

Everyone Now
The Mist

Now we in Bus Stop Dreams have released our third single, “Come Together” (and no, it’s not a Beatles cover). There are two songs, written by Lasse Thomasson and Pär Enqvist respectively, treating the same subject but from two different perspectives. “A dystopian group cuddle” we call it.

The singer on the title track is Andreas Lundgren and on the second song “Let Us Light a Fire” Ulla Wrethagen is singing. You can listen to and download the songs here below, and you can also find these and our other songs on Bus Stop Dreams’ music page. You can find out more about Bus Stop Dreams on the site and on Facebook.

Come Together
Let Us Light a Fire

Bring the Mourning On releases another track for free from their album “Going, Going, Gone”, which I wrote about earlier this year. It’s the excellent “Eye of the Beholder”, which you can listen to and download below, accompanied by a video made by Björn Wahlström (Idle Hands).

You can listen to the entire album on the band’s site, on Bandcamp or on Spotify.

Eye of the Beholder

Buy “Going, Going, Gone” – on iTunes – on Amazon

Well, this is actually my 400th post here on Meadowmusic. That’s quite a few posts isn’t it? and it feels a little like a milestone somehow. If I add the other authors’ posts I estimate that we’ve presented somewhere between 350 and 380 artists and bands, and a majority of these have never been seen in a blog post before.

The band that is given the honour today is Perry and the Travellers. Their guiding star is Lynyrd Skynyrd and the conclusion of course is that it’s about southern rock. And that they deliver for sure, and great southern rock too. At least from what I can judge from the single with two songs they released recently.

The single is a first taste of their new album “The Grand Voyage”, which will be released on the 8th of April, their third album. You can find the band on their site and on Facebook.

Walkin’ On That Line
All My Time

/Pär