If you've heard and liked The Boy Least Likely To, I urge you to seek this album out as soon as you can. It's breezy summer pop with perfect melodies that deserves to outsell James Blunt. The album begins with a trio of magnificent songs, "Girl", "Big jet", and "20 fingers 20 toes"; which is one of the strongest album openings I've heard in a long time. Two of these tracks can be found on GM's myspace page, so go and listen to them. Since I'm no fan of instrumental music, I would have preferred if the short instrumental interludes wouldn't have featured on the album (I could also have done without the 10 minute boring jam session that "Demonstrator" is), but all in all this is an exceptional album to kick start the summer.
- Simon Tagestam
"Vitamin D", which is the sixth track on "Wrong numbers..." sounds like it could have featured on Magic Numbers' album from last year. It's an exquisite pop song that makes me wonder how the same person who wrote that could possibly write such an utterly horrendous song such as "The beat is Satan". This whole album is very schizophrenic, sometimes it sounds like a Smashing Pumpkins song ("Get with the program"), a Weezer pastiche ("Replica"), like Beck ("Cut Elly") or some other popular American "indie" artist. I bet Johannes Gammelby, who is the (disputable) "genius" behind I Am Bones, is really proud with the album and how he's managed to cram so many different musical ideas and inspirations into 12 songs. On their website you can read that 100 hours alone were spent on recording the last track "Honeytrap". The song is pretty good, so next time he might need to spend 100 hours on every track. That's 1,200 hours for a 12 track album. If he worked 9-5 Monday-Friday (taking an hour's lunch break) it would only take him about 6 months. Perhaps then he would have time to decide upon a singular musical direction.
- Simon Tagestam
It's strange, you love this album, and you somehow think that the people behind it will look like as the feeling that their music convey, but when you see them in real life it turns out that they look like your little brother's friends. Lo-Fi-Fnk have done one of the best albums of the year, in my opinion, and I was really looking forward to their gig tonight, even though I was tired as hell and they played at The Old Blue Last which means that most of the crowd will be people dying to be trendy. Fortunately, I stood in the front, so the crowd was beyond my jurisdiction and I could fully concentrate on the music. Now let's get to the point: I loved every minute of it, but the gig was way too short, only 7 or so songs were performed. They (Lo-Fi-Fnk that is) came on a bit late as well, which was annoying, but due to the quality of the performance, it was a night to remember. More please!
- Simon Tagestam
What we've got here is a bit of EBM with female vocals. It's not quite poppy/house enough to appeal to the hipster crowd, but not dark/heavy/industrial enough for my tastes either. It's good for what it is; nothing more, nothing less. But it's not for me.
- Avi Roig
The Slaves aren't that bad (in fact, they're sort of mediocre), but I don't really see the point with them when there are other (Swedish) bands such as Caesars, Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Pet Politics, etc around doing this type of music, but with much more finesse and less clichés. I might listen to the odd track from "Save me from yesterday" in the future, since a nice melody pops up here and there, but overall I find it unexciting.
- Simon Tagestam
Karin has abandoned the folky singer/songwriter thing and attempted to recreate herself as an electropop artist. She actually pulls it off surprisingly quite well. It's too easy for electronic artists to become overly preoccupied with the sounds and forget about the songs, but obviously that's not the case here considering Karin's background. The production could probably be a bit more powerful, but this is a strong debut for an artist trying to totally reinvent herself.
- Avi Roig
Melodramatic pop from Norway with a dark and heavy edge, as would be expected considering the label this is on (Beyond Dawn, etc.). Think mid-period Radiohead, but far more rhythmic and discordant. A bit proggier too, kinda like Dredg or Swedish act Closer. I think the performance on this recording tends to be a bit on the stiff side, but the music is good enough to merit a recommendation anyway.
- Avi Roig
This is manic indierock, not too unlike Danish hype act Figurines crossed with a touch of Niccokick's histrionics. Unfortunately, it's not quite as memorable as either of those acts and I doubt they'll ever rise above mediocre, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.
- Avi Roig
There are currently more electro duos in Sweden than dog owners, but in my opinion, TTA have always been the leaders of this new movement (whereas The Embassy are the founding fathers). Records like their latest EP make me homesick of Sweden. I want to enter a café, go to a club, be at a gig when the band's not playing, turn on the radio, sit in a park, and hear these songs. I can't wait until a future warm summer day at a festival when I'll be sitting in the grass, drinking beer, and listening to "25 years and runnin'" coming out of some dodgy cassette player. I wasn't too sad when TTA left their former label Service, since I assumed they'd continue to write killer tunes. This EP proves that I was right not to worry.
- Simon Tagestam
For someone like me who's been following the Imperial label for awhile, this comp is fairly pointless. All of the tracks are previously released or will be featured on upcoming stuff, so it's redundant to my collection. However, if you're even the slightest bit curious about what Imperial has to offer beyond José González, there's tons of great contributions here to get acquainted with from acts such as Eskju Divine, Samuraj Cities, Melpo Mene, etc.
- Avi Roig
I love covers, I really do. I wish there were more albums like this, were lots of artists interpret one song. It's of course even better when my relationship to the song is similar to the artists'. The original song "Is this love", by Dutch artist Haddaway came out in 1993, and even though I've stopped listening to this sort of music (Eurodance, Eurodisco, or whatever you may call it) by then (I was more into skate punk), it was impossible to go out to any club/disco/bar/restaurant without being subjected to its horrible beat. There, I said it - I don't like the original at all. Therefore, I think it's quite impressive how Dig Your Own Grave has managed to get together so many great and different renditions of the song. There are songs that sound like similar, updated versions of the original (e.g. Komon, Otur, and The Mexicos), but there are also adaptations that are very original, such as Tommy Eld singing in Swedish, and lo-fi versions by All My Brother's Girlfriends and Bare Knee (the latter even featuring an accordion). It's only a shame that this wasn't "properly" released and distributed, I'm sure lots of people would like it.
- Simon Tagestam
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Namur will begin to record a new album later this month co-produced with Jonatan from the band Blackstrap. Namur's most recent album "Songs from the Valley of Baca" is amazing, so expectations are high.