Swedesplease – The Swedish Music Blog

I’ve written about Canadian ex-pat and current Stockholm resident Richard Reagh enough that I don’t think anything further of substance needs to be added. There is some news in his camp however. He’s released a new single from his record Is this the blues i’m singing? and has had it remixed by two of Sweden’s finest – Mr. Suitcase and Sophie Rimheden.

Check out these divergent takes on the new Richard Reagh song “Winterlight”.

Winterlight (remix by Mr. Suitcase)
Winterlight (remix by Sophie Rimheden)

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I got this message the other day in my inbox. And while I didn’t forward it to anyone in my address book I decided to send it to you instead.

“Hejsan! Tänkte att jag skulle skicka en grym låt till (nästan) samtliga i min adressbok, helt utan anledning. Håll till godo!

Hi there! Just thought I’d send a kick ass song to nearly everyone in my adress book, for no apparent reason. Enjoy!”

So without Futher ado here’s a song from 1997 or so from Johan Joahnsson. Please God let him be Swedish and not Finnish or worse Danish.

Please Don’t Shoot at Jesus

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Oh! Custer describes themselves as a pop indie shoegaze combo. I’m a fan of the same three chords they use in abundance on their debut ep. I also like the Galaxie 500 lead guitar solos. The band’s been idle for a couple months now, I hope they’re working on something big. Buy their debut ep Leaves here.

Spoiler

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Apparently I’ve been practically goofing off here at the Swedesplease headquarters. I’ve missed out on some great music in 2006 and I’m guessing you have too. First off have you heard of Henry Morgan from Uppsala? No, you wouldn’t have since his demo had an initial run of about 20 copies (and it was only sent to fanzines at that).

How to describe this stuff? What can you say about earnest shoegazy music recorded in a bedroom with a cheap casio and a two track? Brilliant!

One Day, Any Day

Bonus Bright Eyes Cover

An Attempt to Tip The Scales

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Ok, back to super catchy indie pop. The San Marinos are a quirky Swedish duo whose music is not all bubblegum and ice cream despite it’s sunny pop sound. In fact the song “Super Sexy TV Girl” contains more socio-political commentary in one tune than most indie rock bands have in their entire repertoire.

The San Marinos new 4 song ep is coming out on Liao Records (slogan: “Since 2007″). You can inquire about buying it here.

Super Sexy TV Girl

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If I had my way each and every post would be about an artist that shared some element of Thomas Denver Jonsson, Ed Greene and Jose Gonzalez. But I can understand how that might get a little boring so I try to mix it up as much as possible. However today’s post is about Niklas Hegfalk, a singer-songwriter who takes all those elements and combines them with his own distinct americana sound.

Would You

PS I’ll get back to Swedish quirky indie twee pop tomorrow, promise!

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The Night Is On My Mind are a work in progress from Stockholm. They giggle through half of their songs up on their MySpace page. And the recording sounds like shit (even given my admittedly lo-fi standards). However there’s plenty of life in these songs, life that is often sucked out by too much production, overdubbs and digital shenanigans.

The band has nothing to buy so befriend them on their MySpace page instead.

Ooh

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I can’t figure out Laleh. Her song “Storbror” is complex, dynamic and one of my favorites of 2005-2007. It’s sung in a heavily accented Swedish that hints at gypsy caravans, romantic operas, German beer gardens and Middle Eastern traditional music. There’s a bit of insanity in the song/video and that makes it and Laleh fascinating. Here’s the video for “Storbror”(btw how great is this video, especially the switch to color at the very end)

While on the other hand her recent English language music seems simple and plain in comparison. Is this a real shift in style? Or a product of my imagination? What has caused this change? Decide for yourself as you A/B these two songs/videos. Here’s the video for “November”:

Laleh’s newest record, her second, is out now on Warner Sweden. It’s called Prinsessor features the track “November” and was released Dec. 6.

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I wrote an Anna Leong post and then promptly lost it, so don’t blame me if this one kinda sucks (I wrote about these mop-topped swedes first back then). The band deserves better and I had better written but now it’s gone. The band’s new record After The Forest Fire has been received for review here at Swedesplease. But since no one in their right mind reviews cd’s these days I’ve taken the liberty to tell you about one track.

“61″ starts out with the great line “A faint smell of vomit and you know that you are soon home, I am glad that I am pretty drunk tonight…” and then quickly gets to the catchy chorus of “We’re all humming the same song…61…61″. There’s just something about that chorus and the interspersed vignettes that strikes a chord in me. Experience for yourself below. You’ll be able to buy the record on Jan. 31, try Anna Leong’s new label White Weekend.

61

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There’s a Norwegian band named Efterklang who recently redsigned their website. How does this relate to you, faithful Swedesplease readers? Well, the band has posted a beautiful version of their song “Step Aside” by Swedish singer-songwriter Tobias Hellkvist.

The song has the gentle fingerpicking of Jose Gonzales as well as the more produced sound of Efterklang. A nice compromise I’d say.

Step Aside

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When I first wrote about Hello Saferide over two years ago I had no idea it would be more then just one of countless posts about Swedish indie pop. What I didn’t know at the time, and do know now, is that Annika Norlin of Hello Saferide has a deep well of songs and is both incredibly talented and also extremely prolific. A reader and fellow blogger tipped me off to her new Swedish language project titled Sakert!.

On this recording it seems both her lineup and producer have changed and it’s a decidly different sound then the charming stripped down pop of her earlier records. Sakert! features some pretty impressive members of Swedish indie rock royalty including Daniel Berglund from Isolation Years, Martin Hanberg from Vapnet and Markus Krunegard from Laakso.

I’ve always wondered if there’s a schism within Swedish culture between those who sing in the native language and those who choose to sing in English. I know that in other cultures there is a raging debate over native languages and how to preserve them from the onslaught of outside cultures. Any input on this subject from you the reader would be appreciated plus if anyone wants to fill me in on the lyrics to this song that’d be great too (just an overview would be fine). Pre-order the album here. Buy the single here. Here’s the first single from the Feb 7 debut release from Sakert!

Vi Kommer att do samtidigt

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Canarie Records webpage hasn’t been updated in awhile but their MySpace page is alive and well. One of the bands they plan to release in the Spring is Bakers at Dawn. BAD is made up of Marcus and an occasional friend or two that joins him. Did I say lofi indie folk. Not yet. Ohm my bad. Lofi indie folk, there.

I like the song “Oh No” which will be featured on the new release Just Details. It’s a song about bad luck, broken tape decks and bad moon risings.

Oh No

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Solander’s a friend of a friend of a virtual friend. Their music is hard to pin down as it can be hard and fierce or spare and timid. As you can see the group features a number of interesting instruments including a cello, violin and keys.

There are plenty of religious references in their latest ep which I like. The vocalist on “When Christ Comes to Town” sounds a bit like Bright Eyes and musically on that song I hear a bit the seizmic shifts of tempo tht the Pixies explored and put to such good use in their early stuff. The band will be releasing a new ep in Fb that will include one Belle and Sebastian cover and 3 or 4 other songs (one of them quite noisy). I’ll let you know when you can hear that.

For Every Decent Person There’s A Thousand #$&%&#

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(”Spring To Fall Fall To Winter” courtesy of Daniel Anthony St. George)

Lots of great music that just happens to be Swedish has been featured on some fine mp3 blogs this past week. Here’s a sampling:

Vinyl Mine has the new split 7″ from Jens Lekman and Blood Music. Both songs have been released although both feature an introduction from the artist which is pretty neat, like the commentary track on a dvd.

Obscure Sound has more from Loney, Dear.

Indie Mp3 has a couple song from the Gothenburg based Electric Pop Group.

Skatterbrain has discovered the sweet indiepop of A Smile And A Ribbon. (another song here courtesy of me).

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I’ve loved and I mean really loved everything I’ve heard from the elderly. I just stumbled across a small (possibly defunct) label website that released a single (r.i.p. flashlilja) of theirs in 2005. I’ve linked to one or two of these songs before but I’ll take the risk that you may not have heard or appreciated them the first time through. In a word (or two) gorgeous pop.

Haga nygata (never linked to before)
Wellington (linked to before)
Accident (covered by Absolute Sound)

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(For some reason this post vanished the other day when Blogger was acting up. So in case you missed it here it is again.)
Just got this email from a guy from Norway who has mashed up Katie Melua’s cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven with Billie The Vision & The Dancers “Ghost”. How cool is that?

Just Like A Ghost

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This is the third post in a week of updates on our favorite Swedish bands. Today’s post is a Christmas song from Parker Lewis (wrote about him first here) It’s not Christmas you say…well bah humbug to you. This song is gorgeous and is great any time of the year.

x-mas carol, nyc

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I discovered and wrote up The Tallest Man On Earth back in July. I wrote about the song Before The Mountains. Now his debut ep is out on Gravitation and has been picked up for distribution in the US by Parasol (buy it here). The 5 song ep self-titled ep features even less info than his sketchy MySpace page.

What you do get is rustic, rootsy, acoustic, fingerpicked (Piedmont) blues. The song “Walk The Line” has a beautiful repeating guitar riff as well as TTMOE’s best vocal performance to date. Lyrically it’s hard not to think Johnny Cash and the images and conflicting biblical forces present do bring the man in black to mind.

Walk The Line

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The Tiny have released a new video for the song “Dirty Frames” for the American release of Starring: Someone Like You on Eyeball Records on Jan. 23 and it’s Eraserhead creepy, musically challenging and sumptious where it needs to be. Buy it here now.

The Tiny – “Dirty Frames”

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This is the second of a weeklong series of band updates, kind of a Swedish lofi where are they now? I wrote about The Mexicos way back when. The band was a mystery to me then and still is today. The band consists of Miguel Hallo but also sometimes includes members of Oh Sweet Music. Since my last post about the band they seem to be in a remix/cover mode. The two new songs on their MySpace are a cover Bryan Adam’s hit “Everything I Do” and a remix of Aaliyah’s “Try Again”.

“Everything I Do” has been re-imagined as a disco with pulsating bass and synthesised, processed vocals.

Everything I Do

Bonus:
Try Again (Aailyah remix)

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Oh Sweet Music! (wrote about `em here and here) are one of the finest unsigned bands in Sweden. They’re part of the underground there and share members with Piotor, are friends with Vit Pals, SKWBN, Loney, Dear and many more. They play a sunny style of pop that is at times deceptively serious (like on “Song To Iraq” below and “Let’s Got To War”).

“I Can Win It Back” seems like the newest song (but correct me if I’m wrong). It’s an upbeat little tune about somehow managing to get back on track complete with trumpet, whistles and a slight bossa nova beat. “Song To Iraq” puts into words the feelings of countless Europeans and Scandanavians (and more and more Americans btw) that the war in Iraq is simply wrong on every level.

I Can Win It Back

Bonus
Song To Iraq

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