Moneybrother
To die alone
Burning Heart Records
Anders Wedin's former band Monster released a couple of albums (and a compilation) that had quite a lot of good songs on them, but they were far from perfect, and the same goes for Moneybrother's first album "Blood panic" - a lot of hits, but too many duds. Looking back like this, it appears as if Anders Wedin has gradually improved as a songwriter (not that weird, I know), only for him to reach his full potential on "To Die Alone". For this is in fact, to use a British term, a belter of an album. There are no of those dodgy duets that I had problems to stomach from "Blood panic" and Anders appears very confident with his excellent voice, and it appears as if he has calmed down a bit and not tried to fit thousands of ideas onto one record, which consequently makes all the songs on "To die alone" gel better than what the "Blood panic" tracks do. With "To die alone" we also get a nice mix of up-tempo number and slower stuff, and personally I prefer the slower songs to the rockier ones, there's so much soul in them that they almost burst! The best track on the disc is "Eventually it'll break your heart" (a gorgeous but sad, sad song) which is one of the best songs I've heard in a long time and for the last two weeks I have to get a daily dose of it or I start feeling strange. A few weeks ago I reviewed the first single from this album and wrote that it gave me a 'sickly feeling' - a statement I won't withdraw but I can admit that I like "They're building walls around us" a bit more now than then, but it's still my least favourite track from the album. As you might have noticed, this review doesn't really add that much to the current praise that Moneybrother is getting from the It's a Trap! quarters and other places, so allow me to humbly join the queue of people saying: "This album is fantastic".
- Simon Tagestam