The Blow

mushi will probably disown me from this blog (or worse) if i keep up with the indie electropop trend, but i just can't help myself. i was just introduced to the blow recently, and i'm totally addicted. (in case you haven't noticed, i have a rather addictive personality. i really mean addiction-prone, but i think it sounds better to use the former.) the blow is really just khaela maricich, but the album my friend gave me, Paper Television, was made with jona bechtolt, aka YACHT. apparently maricich did most of the songwriting, and bechtolt provided his programming expertise to throw down some sweet beats. as with a certain other electropop collaboration, i think this method of music-making produced some uneven results, with a few weak tracks, some really good ones, and a couple mind-bottling ones. unlike Give Up, the weak ones aren't really all THAT weak, but just don't quite hold their own with the rest of the album. but the lyrics here are fantastic throughout, and there are a few really interesting conceits. i can't believe i missed this when it first came out - and more importantly, a chance to see these guys live before bechtolt left to focus on YACHT.

here's parentheses, a contender for one of the best things i've heard this year. don't ask me about the karaoke theme, though i think i read somewhere that maricich likes to give her performances as if they're bad/awesome karaoke. prepare for your mind to be bottled.

robyn

oh, how i hated robyn back in ninety-five. i hated her with a passion. a year before my sweet sixteen, (such a misleading term by the way, at sixteen i cut my hair off, bought a pair of dr martins, and stopped being sweet), i was filled with contempt. i hated her nasal voice, i hated her cocky attitude, and i h a t e d her silver jacket.

to me, robyn sure wasn’t being sweet at sixteen either. her second single “do you really want me” became a huge hit in sweden and was the evil force that brought her into my life. the stupid song was everywhere and i just kept thinking that no, robyn, we don’t want you, and no, we don’t think you’re special. die.



ten years later i still held a grudge, but her new album “robyn” was deviously integrated into my life with a sneaky move by someone i trusted. and it grew on me. actually it did more than that; it grew into me. her whole attitude was more humble, she was musically more mature, and more often than not i felt like her lyrics were not only expressing robyn, but myself as well. some down to the very last syllable. i related. and she became real.



but even though robyn and i kind of made up a few years ago, it was quite the eyebrow-raising-event to find me at her stockholm concert last week. a good but in my opinion unnecessary cover of “cobrastyle” (originally performed by teddybears stockholm) followed the intro and started my battle over whether robyn is cool or just really annoying. the hits kept on coming, well performed, and sometimes in different and more interesting arrangements than i had heard before. but it wasn't until kleerup joined robyn on stage that the concert started for me. in “with every heartbeat” i could tell by the way she inhaled that she meant it. somehow that gave me room enough to accept the obnoxious side of her, and love a song like “jack u off”.



so - fine. she is cool. she has a confident attitude. she does her thing. and she doesn’t seem to give a fuck. no fear. this time i can respect that. but i need the small glimmers of reality, of depth, of hurt, in her - not to choke. i’m not over the silver jacket just yet.

The Notwist

There's a lot that's been happening in the musical world but I've been too busy/lazy to write about. But the release of the Notwist album is finally dragging me out of my cave. They've been a bit of a musical chameleon - they started as a grunge/metal band (!@*#!?), but Neon Golden, their last album and the only one I've listened to, was more indie electro-pop. Since I got it on Wednesday, The Devil, You + Me has been on constant repeat - in my car, at home, at work; snippets loop in my head the few times during the day when I'm not connected to speakers. I've gotten stuck on the third track, "Gloomy Planets." There are a lot of solid tracks, but I just can't get past this one. (I could probably also get stuck on "Good Lies," but I feel bad about not even getting past the opener.) The jury's still out as to whether I like it more than Neon Golden, but right now, I don't really care. It's great and worth a listen. Or five hundred.

about a kid - adam tensta

people write a lot about adam tensta. they write about his choice of artist name, his gene pool, and about his bright and promising future. and however boring i find that to be, i suppose it’s all good, it means i don’t have to.

i want to write about this kid adam. who surprised me by combining something i like (rap) with something i don’t like (techno and some house) and made it into a tweak of something i love (hip hop). usually i find that combinations like this, one good and one bad, turn into mediocre at its best, and sometimes even worse than the bad was on its own. but adam pulls it off. not in all his songs, but surely in a handful of the kind of uneven debut album “it’s a tensta thing”.

one of my favorites from the album is “dopeboy”, a good example of this using of beats heavily influenced by techno and house. this track won me over the first time i heard it because of the lyrics. years before adam wrote it i was fending off idiots while screaming that same line. and this is the second thing i want to mention about him. adam is one of the smart kids. he doesn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. at twenty-four he is actually a good role model, something scarce when it comes to rappers.



that, in addition to a god damn awesome voice and obvious musical talent, is why i like adam.

the hit single “my cool” is simply why everyone else likes him. and why people write a lot about adam tensta. or, rather, why all this writing is just the beginning.

same same but different

it started with the ark.

their singer wrote this song, charmed the pants of half of sweden, and got to represent us in the eurovision song contest two thousand and seven. i heart ola salo.



then, a year later, maia hirasawa did this:



you choose.