- 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.