Every year on my music blogs Songs:Illinois and Swedesplease I take some time in December and January to repost some of what I feel was the best music of the year. It was hard not to repost this song from Rena Rama since at the time I called it the best single of the new year. I am still thrilled when this song pops up on an ipod mix or on shuffle. So here’s the first in a series of re-posts” of “the best of 2009″.
You can get pretty jaded pretty fast doing a music blog. The daily deluge of PR emails, lame band recommendations and mp3 links is truly astounding. So it was refreshing to barely get an email that didn’t really contain an mp3 of the debut single off of Rena Rama first record. See, Rasmus Ek from the band acknowledged that he was crap with computers and didn’t know if the file he sent was an mp3 or not. It wasn’t (it was a goddamn .wma file). Anyway I converted it to an mp3, but that’s besides the point. The point is that here’s a band that has made the music first and foremost and not the marketing and promotion. You won’t hear about them on any other site, but this song is simply drop dead gorgeous.
“Klass 6B” is hard to quantify or pigeonhole. It’s very rhythmic without being overcome with electronic beats. It’s very joyous too, but I expect the lyrics aren’t all sunshine and puppy dogs. Rasmus sites influences as diverse as Timbuktu (Swedish hip-hop artist), Laleh, Maia Hirasawa and The Beatles. But there’s clearly a touch of jazz and perhaps some Eastern European folk in “Klass 6b”. Add to that the children’s voices in the background, an umpa umpa tuba, a catchy sing-along section, and a muted trumpet and you have the Swedish song of the new year.
The band is unsigned out of Stockholm and is preparing to release their self-titled debut on January 27 with a release party and show that night at Debaser Slussen.