Fever Ray shouldn’t have the Swedish music market cornered in terms of bands with “fever” in their name. Much like Arcade Fire monopolized those words for the past few years (so much so that the band Theater Fire got grief for stealing the name despite the fact they formed before Arcade Fire), Fever Ray shouldn’t have a monopoly on the term “fever”. Anyway there should be room enough for two Swedish Fevers and Le Fever deserves a chance.

Le Fever is Tom Lagerman a 19 year old boy from Sweden. This summer he occupied his parents living room for three days and three nights to record some of his music. That session became the album The Youth Blamed It All Over Me which he plans to release in Stockholm next week. The songs share a sound with Loney, Dear even down to the airplane references. The music is an odd amalgram of indie pop, twee, and electronica with the occasional horn section thrown in for good measure. Since it’s Thanksgiving in the States the best analogy I can make is that Le Fever’s music is a cornucopia of all the best sounds of indie rock.

Le Fever needs our help to spread his music throughout the world. Let’s make this a social media experiment and see how far we can take him. For more info email Le Fever here – le_fever@yahoo.se.

Festival

Bonus:

Confessions and Airplanes

Elisabeth & Stefan form the duo Leaving Mornington Crescent from Malmö, Sweden. I’m pretty sure that’s them kissing in the photo above. They have a 3″ split cd available on Cloudberry. Their new record is on the Peruvian indie pop label Susy Records. It’s once again a 3″ cdr but this time there are 6 new songs. Buy it now from Susy – it’s a limited edition consisting of 100 numbered copies.

From the sound of “Seventeen” the band ventured into new territory. Unlike the sunny 60’s inspired indie pop of “April Song” from the Cloudberry split cd, “Seventeen” is a rather heavy, shoegaze number with buzzing and churning guitars and a solid backbeat. Still the vocals retain the cheeriness of “April Song” with a chorus of “I’m seventeen on the inside, the only difference is…”.

Seventeen

Bonus track from the Cloudberry 3″ cd:

April Song

I don’t know if there’s a term for the sound of Chuck Morgan. The last post I did on this Gothenberg based troubadour tried to peg him as “romantic indie pop”. His new song, “The Best Of You”, continues that sound but adds even more electronic beeps and blips to the mix. So how about “romantica” for music that mixes emotion with electronics, love with bytes and feelings with 1’s and 0’s?

I don’t know about you but I love this kind of stuff. And Chuck Morgan needs a little love, so please, if you have a music blog, a twitter account, a facebook page, a tumbler, or a myspace please write about Chuck Morgan (feel free to steal my bandwidth and repost the link to his new song “The Best Of You”). Help out a truly “indie” artist and this truly “indie” blog and spread the word.

The Best Of You

I hope there are some marching bands at SXSW. Here in Chicago we have a couple of great bands including Mucca Pazza and Black Bear Ensemble. These guys have the name but not the corresponding sound. Instead Marching Band make a type of lush quiet pop. Makes for a nice listen but not sure if it translates live.

You can see for yourself when they play St. David’s Church on Saturday. More info here.

Make No Plans

P.S. For some reason I don’t seem to mention Swedish music enough. It’s not that I don’t write a ton about Swedish music, it’s just that I don’t actually write the words “Swedish music” enough. I did a Google search and Swedeplease doesn’t turn up on any of the first three pages of results. So to improve my Google ranking for the phrase “Swedish music” I intend to write about even more Swedish music in the months to come. There, that should do it!

P.P.S. I won’t be updating this site til Monday but you can follow me on Twitter here during SXSW.

I haven’t written about a single Swedish act with any sizeable U.S. following for weeks if not months. You can do a search of Swedesplease and find no mention of Loney Dear, SKWBN, Lykke Li or anything on Labrador for that matter. I think that’s pretty astounding (and it’s taking a toll on my readership). But I got into this to write about lesser known Swedish acts and will continue on that path `til I quit.

Leffe P is one such band creating music that is catchy and fun loving. The band’s bio goes something like this (via Google Translate):

For some peace of the soul a washing machine
For some infidelity is a dishwasher with the cord in
For some people are happy not happy at all special
For some people happiness is a glass cone with chocolate
For some, everything is nothing and nothing is everything
It spins around in the world, is starting to feel cold.

My childhood waiting, no one knows what it is waiting for.

As you can probably tell by now I like my Swedish indie rock to have a horns, accordion, Glockenspiel, piano, odd percussion and singable harmonies. You’ll find all these in the songs of Jeffe P. Especially the song below and the video for “Alla vill ha öl men ingen vill dö”. “Njutanger” is from the band’s new EP Pensionatsbacken. Enjoy. And don’t evah say I was a sellout.

Njutanger

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“Alla vill ha öl men ingen vill dö”

“Alla vill ha öl men ingen vill dö” by Leffe P from Nisse Axman on Vimeo.

Here’s a sneak preview of Niels Nielsen’s upcoming single “It’s all In My Head”. Niels does a lofi one man band kinda thing that reminds me a little of Pet Politics.

It’s All In My Head

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The Stockholm based indie pop duo (with 5 members) of Hari and Aino have a single coming out on Cloudberry in February. Here’s the lovely b-side called “Maple”.

Maple

The other day I went off on aging pop stars attempting to connect with teens through music that is base and exploitative. The post revolved around a song/video by Oh No Miriam! called “Teenage Love”. Well now here’s another song by a teenager entitled “Teenage Love”. The band in question is basically a 16 year old Stockholm kid that goes by the name of Sandstream. This is the first single by the group (the Myspace page went live 4 days ago) and it is a duet with a mysterious female singer.

The song starts out with a robotic introduction but this is not Daft Punk electro trash. Instead it’s melodious electro-pop with its roots in English dance pop of the 80’s and 90’s (Depeche Mode, Cure, Echo and the Bunneymen etc etc). The duet is one of the elements of the song that sets it apart, the other is the earnest vocals of the male lead singer. Let me know what you think of this in the comments…I’m going to leave this post up for a day or two to let this settle in.

Teenage Love

It’s funny that teens look to singers years, if not decades, older than them for guidance. How, for instance, has Madonna and her team of aging songwriters anything of relevance to say to young people. Even the American idol teen sensations have a team of managers, agents, and assistants around them at all time stifling any type of normal teenage life.

On the other hand you have Oh no Miriam! documenting the real trials and tribulations of growing up. I wrote about Miriam’s music here first. And now “Teenage Love” now comes with a nice little lofi video.

Teenage Love (via Letters Have No Arms)

“Teenage Love” video

The San Marinos wrote the other day with an update and 2 new songs. They’re to be looking for a cheap place to record their lofi songs in a slightly more hifi way. So if you know of a great cheap studio in the Stockholm area give them a jingle on their MySpace page but let me just say I love them them just the way they are. Of course, if they had true production values I could easily see their music coming out in a nice The Beautiful South shape.

Anyway these two songs are perfect twee pop: the lilting vocals, wistful themes, simple beats and romantic ideas all add up to form the ideal indie pop tune.

I’ll give you one of these new songs today. But if you beg and plead in the comments section I’ll add the second one tomorrow.

On Our Way

P.S. Songs:Illinois has had three great days of music with posts about Willie Nelson, Ramblin Jack Elliott and Phil Lee.

When you write 600 or so music blog posts a year it’s sometimes hard to find a way to single one out as something special. Luckily I have another platform or two when I think something is truly deserving. So today’s band/song will both appear on Songs:Illinois and be part of this month’s upcoming M.A.P. post. I can’t say enough good things about the Swedish pop band The Bridal Shop. I think they perfectly meld the sounds of electronic pop of the 80’s with shoegaze of the 90’s and indie from the 00’s. In other words they’re the complete package.

Their Peruvian label (I know that’s kind of a weird locale for a Swedish group) deserves kudos as well for releasing some of the best indie pop this side of Cloudberry. This song is from the band’s Plastilina Records mini album called In Fragments coming out in February of 2009.

The Ideal State (originally released on a Happy Robots’ compilation)

Bonus

Violation
Marine Thing