Some of the members of Second Hand Rumours got together with some friends and started Oh My!. In the end of last year, they locked the doors to the studio  and recorded 5 tracks during 20 hours. You can listen to two of these here.

And this is something very different from Second Hand Rumours. Here they give us a more basic, close sound, some garage, raw guitars and really nice pop melodies. A little brit pop and a really cool voice in Johan Åkerström.

You can listen to more tracks on Oh My!’s Myspace page. In March they will hit the studio again and my guess is that it won’t take long after that, before we can listen to the new tracks.

I, I Did
Scary Conversation

Swedish Shoes is a new duo consting of Ola Angleby and Joakim Näslund. They started directly with the creation of their first EP, where you can listen to a couple of tracks here below.

Naked and with a lo-fi feeling it’s about a guitar, two voices, some handclapping. Beautiful melancholy like in an early sixties duo mixed with the playfulness of  Beautiful South. When it’s naked like this, in the end it all comes down to the songs themselves, what they can give and convey. And I think that the duo has done a really good job here.

Listen for yourself, and if you want to here more songs you can visit Swedish Shoes on Myspace.

Sleep and Eat
Go On Girl

Last year Friska Viljor released their second album “Tour de Hearts” (Crying Bob Records), a wonderful album full of great melodies and warmth. In a way the band started out of pain and bitter change in 2005, as the two band members just had broken up from earlier relationships. They set out to speak about their feelings around this, through music.

And even if I feel the pain from the singer, in a way like an Axl Rose that has calmed down and started to sing in The Cure, this music feels upplifting for me. Great pop melodies, many times with a sing-a-long feeling, is given it’s own character with mandolins and a folk and acoustic feeling. But at the same time grand. Does that make any sense?

Well, anyway, you can listen to a couple of tracks from “Tour de Hearts” here and hopefully you’ll have the chance to see them live some day. If you want to listen more and talk to them, you can visit Friska Viljor on Myspace.

On and On
Old Man

Others about Friska Viljor and “Tour de Hearts”: Eaten By Monsters, Absolut Noise, Indierock.net (in portuguese)

Light, light, like bare feet on a flowering meadow in spring, I hear  Ida Olsson’s bright voice with the piano or guitar play of  Simon Ljungman. I don’t even think I have to listen to the beautiful words to feel a warm breath of spring break through the cold winter that predominate now, at least here in Sweden.

It’s swedish ballads mixed with some feeling of french chansons, especially in the piano based songs. It’s acoustic and naked on their new album “Ida & Simon”.

Ida has released two albums before, both of them in collaboration with Simon, and the latest album was born, in a sense, on Ida’s birthday. She received a gift card from Simon, which said “recording mix and master of your next album”!

Here you can listen to a couple of tracks from “Ida & Simon”, and I just had to add a track from her last album “Andas solsken” (“Breathe Sunshine”) also, “Spara vackra dagar” (“Save beautiful days”). Visit Ida’s site (in Swedish) to read, listen and download more songs. You can also find Ida on Myspace.

Två hjärtan i samma kropp
Vi vet inget om imorgon
Spara vackra dagar

I haven’t really figured out yet what’s behind Anyone For Tennis‘ interesting band name. If they are referring to the classic phrase in some way or to the old Cream song with the same name, or to something else. (sorry, forgot to ask :-)) But there’s no question what their music is about: great pop/rock with a lot of energy.

Maybe I could describe it as one part of Foo Fighters and one part of brit-pop. Well produced, but not overpolished, creating a nice balance between the pop and the rock energy in the music.

The band is just about to release a new five-track EP, and you can get a taste of it here, “In Her Honor”. I also added a track from their debut EP, “Radio”.
Read more about them and download more tracks at Anyone For Tennis’ site or visit them on Myspace.

In Her Honor
Radio