Photo: Oscar Poulsen

“I usually describe my music as full of clichés. If someone else had used this term you’d perhaps interpret this as something negative, but I on the contrary love to play with the expected, and therefore I usually say like this:

Instrumental and improvised music doesn’t have to be difficult, simplicity doesn’t have to be boring. Surprise by playing the expected. The music should be like a Tarantino movie, – beautiful, violent and full of clichés.”

That’s how Lars Åhlund describe the music on Lars Åhlund’s Second Coming‘s new album “Fire In Ödeshög”. When I use the word cliché myself I mean something that is used by routine, without depth and maybe a little boring. And from that perspective Lars Åhlund’s Second Coming is quite the opposite.

I think that Lars Åhlund lack the ability to be musically boring and do something by routine, which I could hear already in his pop projekt Gocart System, which I have written about before. Now this is first of all about jazz, where Lars together with Joakim Simonsson, Markus Hängsel and Gustav Nahlin (plus some guests) explore jazz clichés from the past.

And it sounds anything but an old, worn expression, it’s rather a fresh, updated and fun jazz album which ventures into various jazz styles from the starting jazz blues “Vår Blues” to  70’s gangster movie themes to jazz proggressive music to funk- and pop flirts. Brilliant musicians where Lars’ playful saxophone with attitude lies in the front asking for attention. An album also, I think, that’s perfect for those that haven’t listened that much to jazz but are curious of what it’s about.

Listen to the album on Spotify and on a couple of more songs on Myspace. You can follow the band on their Facebook page.

Vår Blues
Ödeshög