Yesterday I got a mail from Adore Music that they had signed a new interesting band that call themselves Easy October. It’s Kristoffer Hedberg who, with his songwriting in English, inspired the well-known colleagues Kristofer Åström, Nikke Ström (Nationalteatern, Totta) and Johan Håkansson (A Camp, Freddie Wadling) to join him in the new band. A single is going to be released in December and an album later on, but you can pre-listen now already. It’s country rock and och pop with retro feeling from the seventies mixed with vibes from indie pop. Beautiful melodies and a soft atmosphere.
Last year I wrote about Antonia Vai and told you about that she was working on her debut album. Now that work is done and she has released not only one but two albums at the same time, collecting 25 of her songs. The first album “Lovers and Prophet” is more consistent in the sound and themes, while the second one, “Dirt From When the Earth Was Flat” is a collection of home recordings and varies more in style and sound, and which shows some of her creative span.
I think it’s just as enjoyable to listen to both albums, to discover where she’s heading with her musical ideas from one track to another. Even if it’s difficult to characterise her music in general terms I think that soul vibes is something that runs through most of her production together with doses of folk music, but expect excursions to jazz, pop and other influences in a sound that often takes off from the acoustic with a rhythmic guitar as the prefered instrument. Listen here below to the soul jazz vibing “Macho Woman”.
Today I’ve been spinning Leaders Off’s new album “Yr Band Suck” the whole day. And I will probably do that many times in the future because this was a great album , in fact one of the best I’ve heard so far this year. Generalising I’d say that it’s airy indie rock with attitude, full of beautiful melodies and with a great dynamics both when it comes to the song arrangements as well as the album itself. A solid album with creative songwriting which grows with each listen.
I’ve written before about The Sweet Serenades after they released their debut album. Earlier this year they have also released a couple of singles taken from their new album “Help Me!”, which was released last month.
If you liked their indie pop before you won’t get disappointed now, but they have moved on with a more compact sound with more muted guitar strings, more toms and a stronger drive. It’s a catchy indie pop with a big dose of playfulness, humour and winks at classical approaches from the pop history, where they even manage with the feat of fitting in groanings á la the old Eurovision song “Djingis Khan” and falsetto choirs from the sixties’ surf pop in the same song (“Terminal 2”).
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.
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