Lasse Franck is a skilled word juggler, that with his expressive, rather sensitive voice serves his lines in a pop/rock menu, with nice melodies. From softer pop songs, that remind me of Olle Ljungström, to rock with a drive.

Lasse sings in a way that really emphasizes the lyrics. And I accept the lyrics pretty fast, which can be layered personal reflections delivered with warmth and humour, where the afterthoughts make me smile, or provocations with his tongue in his cheek.

A full length album is being recorded in a collaboration with Pär Edwardson, Jonas Slättung and Kalle Thorslund, and will probably be released in spring 2009.
In the meantime you can get a taste of it by listening to three tracks:

Åka skridskor
Målaren
Inget val

Visit Lasse Franck on Myspace

Earlier this year The Search released their fourth album “Saturnine Songs”. An album filled with melancholic pop, beautiful melodies embedded in a nice atmosphere with a big sound. There is a lot of vibes from the eighties in this music and earlier they have often been compared with for example the Cure. And sure, in some songs this is clearly obvious especially in some intros and how it may sound, but to me I find them just as much with one foot in the sound of bands from this century, like for example Doves and Travis.

The Search plays live frequently, and often they perform on stages in Germany, where their record label afmusic is based. And I recommend you to visit afmusic’s site if you want to download the album “Saturnine Songs” ” for free, or buy versions with extra tracks or with the highest sound quality. Or to see where you can buy a CD.

The Search is extremely generous with their material, both the newest tracks and the earlier recordings. On Last.fm you’ll find more or less every song they have ever released, both for listening and downloading.
You can also visit them on Myspace.

Rapunzel:

Listen to a couple of songs:

Distant
Swimmer

Others about The Search: Reflections of Darkness, EvilSponge

I really should be the wrong person to write this post. Because, if I identified myself with anything in the eighties, it sure wasn’t synth pop. On the contrary I mostly found myself on the other side in the discussions that broke out frequently in the group of friends. Discussions that often was about the question if “real” music demanded “real” instruments or not, how music would sound in the future and so on.

So what could I do? Well, I had to dig all good synth songs secretly at home of course. Because it was rather difficult not to give in to all great pop tunes that constantly were delivered by Depeche Mode, Human League, Soft Cell, Vince Clarke, Ultravox and others.

During the nineties this genre more or less disappeared from the main music channels. But a few bands continued to do their thing and could rejoice in the new century when the renaissance of this genre came. One of these bands is Arachnophobias, who let their style of playing form during the big synth wave in the first half of the eighties. And they have kept their style. It may sound a little more modern, maybe a bigger sound, but in all main aspects this is good synth pop with a real retro feeling.

Well, for newer listeners it’s about electropop with catchy, direct melodies, a somewhat mellow ambience and distanced vocals and a lot of old analogue synths.
Arachnophobias will release a new album before this year is over, a 14 track record with the name “By the Shape of My Eyes”, which will be available on
Arachnophobias’ site.

Here’s a taste of the album:

New Years Eve
Two Arms & Four Wheels

Listen more on their Myspace page

Sometimes I’m asked if we’re not soon going to run out of intesting new Swedish music to write about. We do have the ambition to a new artist every day (even if we also present new albums with the artists.) I think I have a pretty good overview and I normally answer that there are tens of thousand great artists in Sweden that deserve more attention. There is a lot of listening to artists and sometimes I get extra happy from a new discovery.

Like when I found Gocart System. Their apparently straight pop songs didn’t fool me. This is really joyful. Retro flirting songs run away and become something completely different. Like in for example “Always Been the Same” where they start with a “No One Lives Forever”-intro and then runs off to all kinds of directions.
This is imaginative pop that’s inspired by many sources, so at the moment I’ll stick with the label “Gocart System”.

This autumn they will release their debut EP on their own label Lashiec Records. Listen to two tracks here:

Always Been the Same
Silver Guitar

Visit Gocart System on Myspace

With Minaya we meet Swedish soul pop, close to the neighbourhoods where Mauro Scocco has been a ruler for a long time. I would say that there is also a dash of latin vibes in some songs, which of course could be explained by Minaya’s origins from the Dominican Republic.
This is very soft, the melodies are straight and catchy, and Minaya’s beautiful, tender voice seems to be made for this music.

Minaya is working on the completion of her debut album, together with the producers Fredrik Samson and Peter Cartriers. You can listen to two promo songs here below, a taste of what is coming up. Here’s what she writes about her song “Ung sorg” (“Young pain”):

“A song I’ve written, inpired by our children and our young ones. From what I see, children and young people today many times have different demands hanging over them, than what you and I had growing up. And I sense that they don’t feel that well. Considering the media and the body ideals there, it’s not surprising, and at the same time children are supposed to do well in school, and fulfil many other requirements imposed on them both by us and themselves. This can lead to many complexes, and many problems for a young life.” (translated from Swedish)

On Minaya’s site you can listen more and also on Myspace.
She also has a blog (in Swedish).

Ung sorg
Gatorna på Åsen