Column: A Postcard Life #3
Autumn is my favorite season, though it has not always been the kindest one. With the days growing shorter and colder, and with summer bleeding out so beautifully in the yellows, oranges, and reds of the decaying leaves, I often find myself looking inwards and backwards over the past year, examining its successes and failures, and tallying up all of those missed opportunities and regretted memories. Some years this is a more difficult process than others. The future seems much further off with scarves wrapped around our necks and layers of clothing attempting the stave off the sharp teeth of impending winter. These are the times when music becomes necessary for our mental stability and survival, and can assist in properly facilitating and strengthening those introspective rambles into the layers of experience that make us the individuals we are. The end of the year is indeed a good time to take stock of where we are. By doing so we increase the likelihood that once spring hits, we know where we want to go as the momentum of another year starts up. And what medium better to guide our hands than music, specifically creations from the Scandinavian states - a people who know all too well the darkness of autumn and winter.
While my first winters in Stockholm were difficult - those first days of near perpetual darkness, combined with the cold and quiet, the snow absorbing so much of life's clamor - they pale in the face of what the robust souls of Norrland face every year. This might be why there is such presence to their music in these festering months of a lost year.
The Bear Quartet have quite the catalog to peruse in these moments, though I'd probably fall into "Angry brigade" and "Personality crisis" at this early stage of the decay, saving "Gay icon" for when summer becomes something that is coming, not a string of events that have just passed. "Vi kommer att d� samtidigt" from S�kert!'s self-titled album will also help bridge that twilight period between autumn and winter.
The Perishers' "Let there be morning", and even this year's "Victorious", will funnel themselves into my headphones as October overtakes my present and the sun starts to ignore this northern hemisphere. "My heart" and "Come out of the shade" are near perfect examples of songs that traverse those strange corridors between hope lost and hope rediscovered. Compositions like these thrive as winter's influence starts to win out over the summer's optimism and as life slows to a less frantic pace. Upbeat melodies will fit certain days of chilly sunlight, but building landscapes of softer tones and less buoyant themes seem more apt as calendars reach the end of their tenure on our walls.
And while I am not as familiar with groups like KVLR, Isolation Years, Fireside, and Carpet People, the tracks I have heard present further evidence of Norrland's artists' ability to purposefully color the passing moments of autumn and winter. But, bands from Sweden's more populated south are not to be ignored.
"Howl howl gaff gaff" has a few tracks that fit the coming months, but the Shout Out Louds' sophomore effort "Our ill wills" has the malleability to be just as relevant in November as it was for me in May, and will easily survive in its relevance as 2008 comes more clearly into focus. "Normandie", "You are dreaming", and "Impossible" have risen to the upper echelons of my favorite Scandinavian compositions, exemplifying that strange exploration of loss and potential salvation that Scandinavian musicians have perfected over the past few decades.
While I enjoy this year's "Mother, am I good looking?", and agree that it has some of Laakso's best material to date (especially "Worst case scenario" and "Norrk�ping"), it is "My gods" that is the more solid and focused record overall, a record that constantly unveils new strata, especially when viewed through the different lenses provided by shifting phases of the year, and thematically more compatible with the liminal period of cold and darkness before next year's thaw.
Kent have a plethora of songs that fit well into any autumn playlist, and their seventh studio album "Tillbaka till samtiden" is due out October 19. Jens Lekman's most recent effort will undeniably play some role in distracting me from the cooler temperatures and from my own pressing concerns. And pushing from Sweden into Denmark, The Kissaway Trail's striking debut album will gather some inertia as yellow and brown leaves cover the once green lawns of our neighborhoods, CS Nielsen's leading effort will take on a slightly heartbreaking tone, and I've never been one to dismiss Figurines' ability to bring a little cheer into the gloomiest moments.
This list could go on for quite some time, which quite succinctly sums up the state of Scandinavian music, especially compared to more populated countries such as America, Canada and Great Britain. I never even got to touch upon Norway's or Finland's musical contributions, and could probably create an entire column devoted to that one purpose alone, nor was I really able to go into much depth or cover all the bands I'd have liked to.
Many things become less cheerful as the year becomes less of a youthful cry and more of an echo, but there are soundtracks to elevate us above these dark currents, or allow us to plunge fully into them - and a sickening number of the most powerful of these are created in Scandinavia. There is a great deal of hope to be taken from that statement, more than enough to get me through until next spring.
- Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson