vienna teng

some people forget when they first heard some song they came to love.
i’m not one of them.

or rather, when i get introduced to music that i like, i remember who was behind it. those people instantly earn a special place within me. come what may, but i don’t forget. not that.

out of these type of music findings, vienna teng is my most recent one.

kent - socker

i couldn't tell you why, it's not like it's a new song in my life, but since yesterday i've been obsessed with this. the second verse is so good you should learn swedish if you don't already. just to understand it.

my salvation lies in your love

ever since i stumbled upon alexi murdoch’s “orange sky” last night, his album “time without consequence” has been ruling my life. the air of it, the mood, wanders straight into my soul, and i just can’t get enough. alexi builds up a relaxing feeling in his songs, and he does it slowly and meticulously, by calmly looping a short bit of the melody and letting the music just flow around it. it’s soothing, but in an important stare-at-the-ocean-and-ponder-about-life’s-big-questions kind of way.

his songs are for contemplation - simple lines of the lyrics like “don’t forget to breathe” seem like truths aimed straight at me. it is as if alexi knows the secret of life, and if i just listen carefully, he’ll sing it to me. i play the album over and over, and when i try to think of something else to listen to, everything else just seems… bleak. i’m captivated, it’s magic, and i’m not sure that i ever want it to stop.


(this is a really good live recording made by www.baeblemusic.com)

free indie on a summer evening

i happened to walk past mosebacke tonight and got a free live version of lykke li doing “i’m good, i’m gone”. with a perfect view of stockholm and the sun setting somewhere behind city hall.

pure chance anyone?



(if you like it, check out the cool acoustic version here. it even has robyn it it)

sofia karlsson

two days ago, an old friend of mine quite forcefully introduced me to a swedish folk musician, named sofia karlsson. and, as is turns out, for a good reason.

sofia does real music, sprung from something different than commercial interests. her songs seem to hold a close connection to… something, that is certainly invisible to the eye, but yet present. i can’t touch it, but i feel it. there’s an honesty trickling from how the instruments are handled. something pure, and simple. and maybe that’s what it is, that something, that moves me.

or perhaps it’s just the folk touched harmonies, but the something stirs deep within my chest, and it feels like home. suddenly i wish my suburban apartment was a timber cottage painted red with white corners. somewhere far up north, where the pine trees are old and the sun never sets over the baltic sea. i’d sit there on a porch, and breathe. and sofia would spela för livet (play for life).



(btw, this clip is a live recording. see what i mean? real music).

and there he was

several people and incidents have been trying to introduce a specific man into my life. with fantastic reasoning behind them. and tons of support. so, i know about him. what he does, where he’s from, how much better my life would be with him in it.

even so, it’s not until i’m sipping free drinks at the restaurant across the street from work that the time has come. i can see it in my head as if the producer of my life was working it live – truman show style.

“this is it guys! second beer, she’s susceptible, let’s put some effort into it this time”

the last guest just left the restaurant and the owner grabs the ipod, longing to listen to his music rather than the stuff he has to use for the dining room.

“aaaand, cue mr johnson”

the music starts. guitar. a man’s voice. a soothing rhythm. i sip my beer, not really thinking, the song is intertwining itself into my mood seamlessly, gracefully leaving an almost subconscious mental note of approval.

“wait for it… wait for it... “ (holding his breath)
“yes! i think we got her! ok… i need “drink the water”. now. go!”

after the second song that mental note has grown to a times square billboard in my mind, and my question is answered with a “jack johnson”. i swear to god that anyone close enough would have heard my brain make that satisfying snapping sound of the last piece of the puzzle falling into place.

“that’s a wrap boys, we nailed it.”

so, now i’m obsessed. possessed. distressed, by the way his songs are obliterating my last.fm statistics. and that’s not even including the times i’ve been on my other laptop, just youtubing him.

yeah, i have no idea what the fuck took me so long.

kent live at zinkensdamm, june 08

some experiences are so good that trying to explain them becomes frustrating.
it’s as if words lessens them.

so, about kent live at zinkensdamm:

i now have a crush on jocke berg. and the light guy.
(more photos here)

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.

keep your worries

music can sometimes be very much like a sense for me. or at least it can act like one. and connect with others. it’s more than just hearing, or a sound. it’s like a smell that pulls me back into a situation, a taste that brings back a memory, or a sight that recreates a feeling. sometimes a song, a rhythm, a beat, part of a melody, or simply just a chord can affect my whole body just like the caress, or slap in the face, of someone’s hand.

this song was introduced to me by someone who ended up hurting me more than most people are capable of. and, it was also buried with the rest of that someone. for over one and a half years it stayed buried. with me far away from it. until quite recently. when it was time. time to take it back. not back to what it was, but back to me. untainted. and awesome.

schlager - the conclusion

let's revise:

step one: a schlager needs a catchy refrain.
step two: all good schlagers have a bridge, followed by a key change towards the end.
step three: a schlager performer should have time characteristic and awesome clothes, and definitely do some kind of cheesy dance moves.

i give you the swedish contribution of 2008. and, i rest my case.

kate nash

to me, kate nash has always been “that girl with the obnoxious british accent”. now, calm down, i adore a good british accent as much as the next girl, but hers isn’t charming. or witty. or cute. hearing it makes me think of a ugly, trashy and seriously annoying girl who tries to boss her boyfriend around by getting thrashed and scoring cleavage induced attention from some random guy she met in a bar.

however, when kate opens her stockholm concert with “pumpkin soup” i find myself smiling. she is tiny, dressed in a huge, white t-shirt promoting the opening band, and though she’s sitting down while playing the piano i can see her head every other beat because she is bouncing up and down. which of course is adorable and warms me up to the whole experience in general. and to be honest, it’s not that bad. actually, some songs are pretty rocking and i can feel the floor of debaser medis tremble under my feet. for instance, the rounding up of “mariella” made the redhead in front of me go completely crazy and eventually forced another girl to flee for her life.

in the calmer and more intimate part of the show where we had kate on her own, she vulnerably delivered the keeper of the evening. the live version of “nicest thing” left me blinking ferociously and convinced me to sod the accent and buy the bloody album.

- gadd, babymaker gadd.

for a few years, not very much happened in my cd collection after the entrance of mikael rickfors. the next cd i remember getting was eric gadd’s “on display” in the early nineties. i can’t remember who gave it to me, but “on display” turned out to be one of the best albums of all time. it’s also the only cd i’ve had break on me because i played it too many times.

eric gadd is commonly referred to the swedish king of soul. and, i’ve heard that several couples have thanked him for providing the music that inspired the conception of their children. and why not? i’ll believe it. maybe there will be more swedes soon. thanks, eric.

i haven’t heard anything new from him for years, and was really excited when i realized he just released a new single. unfortunately he decided to return to singing in swedish, but with these lyrics it’s a good thing not very many people will understand them. disregarding that, i think the first single is great, and look forward to hearing the rest of the album.

Skinny Love

I don't think I've ever been so satisfied with so little. For Emma, Forever Ago (short for an LP, and musically pretty minimalistic) was already excellent, but I was completely blown away at the Bon Iver show tonight. Except, it turns out that it wasn't really a Bon Iver show so much as it was a Phosphorescent show, with Bon Iver supporting. I even looked at the venue's website, and had simply convinced myself that he was the headliner. I didn't discover the cold, harsh truth until I got up to The Independent (probably my favorite venue, by the way) and walked in to the opening refrains of 'Skinny Love', apparently having missed 20 minutes of his set. But what followed was worth way more than the $12 ticket price and the hour-plus travel time.

My expectations going into the show were pretty low; while I love the album, I was skeptical of how his harmonizing vocals and looped guitars in the studio would translate to a live show. And most of the album he recorded by himself, only bringing in some outside help for two of the album's nine tracks, so what would he really do onstage? Oh, how wrong I was. After a great start (for me anyway) with 'Skinny Love', he and his touring band kicked it up with an amazing rendition of 'Wolves.' [EDIT: Someone awesome has put up videos of the show. Here's the version of Wolves I got - the audio quality toward the end isn't fantastic, and live the drums were just plain haunting, but it'll do. Check out the other songs too!] Maybe I'm just crazy and it was the draft from the door, but Act II sent chills down my spine, particularly as the refrain grew more and more insistent as the crowd started joining in. I can't recall the names of his drummer and second guitarist, but they really helped to create a little extra space so that the band could flesh out the music into something brilliant live. They proceeded to work through the rest of the album in order, with a great bluesy intro to 'Blindsided,' and a solo performance of 're: Stacks' to close out the set. (I kind of disagree with that choice, but hey, Justin Vernon said they rarely played it earlier in the tour, so who am I to complain.) At the end of the set, Vernon announced that they'll be playing at the Outside Lands Festival in August. I already can't wait to see those first couple tracks that I missed tonight. You can hear the whole album on their virb page, but do yourself a favor and see them live (and pick up a cd!)

She & Him

After what UPS called 'delays due to external factors,' I've finally gotten my copy of the She & Him record. I'm usually pretty skeptical of the bands that get super-hyped by the Pitchfork machine and the indie blogosphere [cf. Vampire Weekend], but I think they've got something here. It's billed as a collaboration between Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, but I feel it's really all about Zooey and that wonderful voice of hers. She gets all the songwriting credits, except for the covers and the last track to which Jason Schwartzman contributed, and while Ward plays guitar and produced the album, the music never overshadows her vocals. Which is a good thing. I love the retro feel of the album (the covers are the Beatles' "I Should Have Known Better" and Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got A Hold On Me"). There's nothing remarkably innovative going on here; it simply sounds good.

Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? [via Merge Records]

schlager - the appearance

step three: a schlager performer should have time characteristic and awesome clothes, and definitely do some kind of cheesy dance moves.

i don’t know if there will ever be a better contribution to show of step three than the winners of eighty-four. this was during the years of language restriction described in a previous post. (to be exact there have been different restriction periods, but the one we care about lasted from seventy-seven to ninty-nine). so, the song is in swedish which means that some of you may not understand it, but trust me, this is a school book example of the lyrics being irrelevant. nobody else understood them either. they are all about how heaven opens up and everyone smiles as these three brothers “almost float around in their golden shoes”. it should also be noted that there apparently was no need for the artists to sing on key. perhaps the judges were just wooed by the matching belts. i know i sure am.

schlager - the golden years

as we move on, we enter the years when countries were strictly allowed to compete in the eurovision song contest singing in their own language. i always found that part of the contest quite amusing and i believe it enhanced the musical focus. after all, a schlager really isn’t about the words. it’s about the melody. which incidentally brings us to the next schlager lesson.

step two: all good schlagers have a bridge, followed by a key change towards the end.

a bridge doesn’t really need to have anything to do with the rest of the song, and sometimes it's even awkward. the bridge is usually whipped out close before the end of the song and brings the tempo down for a while to enhance the comeback of the refrain. to closely follow the bridge with the classic schlager move of raising the key by one semitone certainly serves a purpose of giving the song a more powerful finale. these two tricks, and the key change in particular, have become part of what defines the genre.

to demonstrate step two i give you the eurovision song contest winner of ninety-one. and, well yes, you guessed it. it’s sweden again.

schlager - the early days

it’s that time of year again. on saturday evenings restaurant owners scattered around sweden are scratching their heads while looking out at the streets. empty. bartenders are absentmindedly reading old newspapers, already having wiped down the counter thirteen times and given up on looking busy with refilling straws.
n o b o d y is out.

the magnificent schlager, a somewhat european, or perhaps even more scandinavian music phenomenon, is ruling over the common swede. we are all at home, watching melodifestivalen, the tv show where artists compete in music - and which ultimately decides who will represent the country in the eurovision song contest. this used to be a competition in schlager, but has in recent years become a random “sing-a-song”-off, if you will. however, let’s not deal with the new times, but instead reminisce over the good old days, when the eurovison song contest was referred to as schlagerfestivalen.

a schlager is a song. or, actually it’s a genre. it’s difficult to explain, but no need to fear, i will guide you through it. step by step. we'll start with the basics.

step one: a schlager needs a catchy refrain.

to clarify, here is an example. now, please enjoy the winning song of the eurovision song contest of seventy-four. with complimentary pictures of stockholm and a commentator slightly obsessed with blond vikings. because as swedish success stories usually do, it all started with abba.

the looptroop rockers

on this particularly rainy saturday i am folded up in my armchair, wrapped in my covers and watching nature clean my window. tore and i are simultaneously streaming the oh-so-fabulous radio show “p3 hiphop” and discussing it over im.

one of my favorite swedish hiphop groups, the (recently renamed) looptroop rockers, opens the show with their new single “the building”. i believe msn messenger documented my first reaction as “this doesn’t sound like the looptroop at all”.

now, my knowledge of the group could still be called limited and i need wiki to tell that they me lost their third rapper cosmic about a year ago and now consist of promoe, supreme and dj embee. but i still feel like this sound is different from the looptroop i know. in my world, they have a dark, dirty concrete type of city sound. like snow on the streets of stockholm. white that was ran over, turned gray, got pissed off, and decided to give it back to the man by wetting his shoes. the most famous track on their debut album “modern day symphony” is probably “the long arm of the law”, but i like this one better:



moving on, there are a few tracks from their later albums “the struggle continues” and “fort europa” that feel more… upbeat. or less underground. to be diplomatic, let me put it like this: to me, this is a track way likelier to get played at a club than “zombies” above. nothing wrong with that though, i think it’s a kick-ass song.



so, as p3 hiphop comes on and i reluctantly stretch towards the volume control to settle the contest between my stereo and my neighbor’s vacuum cleaner once and for all, i’m confused. and i don’t think it’s only because dj embee is singing, which is somewhat concerning in some parts, i’m not gonna lie. rather, it’s because "the building" is something different. something close to bouncy. and not the classic, hip-hop-put-your-hand-in-the-air type of bouncy. but happy bouncy. a new sound for a newish name. and after listening to it a couple of times, i still don't know what to say. for the longest time i want to label it non-looptroopy. but that's not entirely true. "the building" is far from what they used to do back in the day, but it does follow some kind of mathematically logical development curve. not that they are headed towards bad. just more commercial.

Stay down, champion

Matt Berninger could easily fit Müshi's description of Mikael Rickfors - well, I'm not sure about the leather jacket, but he certainly has the stubbly cheeks and the alcoholic's voice. In fact music writers have compared his husky baritone to whiskey. And with his lyrics, he comes off as that rambling yet startlingly lucid drunk sitting in the corner of the room that somehow ends up in your head. Anyway, I don't think I need to sing any praises about The National - Boxer was released to pretty much universal acclaim, and made it's way onto a slew of year-end lists.

What I really want to get to is the experiences I've had listening to this disc over the past year. When the disc first came out last May, I was in a state that left me completely vulnerable to the devastating blows delivered by each track. Over the next couple months, it kept finding its way into my rotation. I saw The National in concert [twice!] and verified that yes, indeed, Matt is a veritable drunk. Then suddenly, I kind of forgot about them. I still put them on occassionally, but I forgot about the weight that had come with those first listens, and I actually started to enjoy the album even more, focusing more on the music itself, and the brilliance of their seemingly innocuous musicianship.

Last week, I popped it into the car stereo. I was on my home from another typical day at work. And of course, there was traffic. It occurred to me that I had never looked at the liner notes, which is weird, because that's a part of my process when I open new cd's. Maybe I was busy at work when that shipment came or something. In any case, I suddenly decided that I had to look at them. Immediately. I opened the case up to find "Stay Down Champion Stay Down" over a shot of the band standing in a field. And sitting there in traffic, all the reasons why I loved the disc in the first place came rushing back to me. I always thought that 'grower,' which many critics used to describe the album, had a bit of a negative connotation to it - as if the cd sucked, or maybe was just too difficult to sift through, on first listen. But now it just makes sense. This is the sort of cd that I can just get completely immersed in, the cd's that are why I even listen to music at all.

Since you made it this far, and this is a music blog, I'm still gonna plug em:
Start a War
About Today

the christening

when i was nine years old, i was all about mikael rickfors, a forty-something rocker with stubbly cheeks, black leather jacket and the dark, serious voice of a real man. well, or that of an alcoholic. the very first cd i owned was his debut solo album, named after the sensational hit “vingar” (wings).

i didn’t have my own cd player yet – hell, most of my country didn’t. (there are obvious advantages of having a dad obsessed with hifi). but my dad market it with my name and the tag “R-1” to make it compatible with his cd filing system. i wouldn’t allow anyone to listen to it without my permission, that cd was mine, and only mine. i played the first song over and over. again and again. i still know every beat of it, though i must admit i had forgotten about the spectacular narrative part in the beginning.

so what better way to start off this music blog than with the man who had me rocking out in front of my parents stereo, certainly not for the first time in my life, but for the first time as a music owner.

ladies and gentlemen. i give you mr rickfors. show some respect.