Indieworkshop spotlights Finland's Gentlemen Losers: m/articles.php?id=331" target=_blank>https://www.indieworkshop.com/articles.php?id=331

Dusted reviews The Knife's "Silent shout": magazine.com/reviews/2999" target=_blank>https://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/2999

Aversionline talks about the latest from Paatos: m/blahg/2006/07/silence-of-another-kind.html" target=_blank>https://www.aversionline.com/blahg/2006/07/silence-of-another-kind.html

Profile: Bobby Baby

Live report: Acid House Kings + The Legends @ T.T. The Bear's, Cambridge, MA 07/10/06

The Callahan
Hardpop
Dead Frog Records

This album's been out for quite a while, but I've just gotten around to really hearing it (the first listen didn't excite me much). This Swedish quintet have made music with various personnel over the past few years, but "Hardpop" is actually their debut full-length. That's an apt title, as this is upbeat, 80s-influenced pop music with a solid kick to it, especially when guitarist Fritz Callahan (all the band members are named Callahan) gets to riffin' like mad on his axe. Vocalist Andy sounds a tad like early Bowie at times, and drummer Fred is a more than competent drummer. It's a measure of the remarkably high level of quality of Swedish musicians these days that even a group like this who aren't too original are still better than their genre counterparts elsewhere in the world. most listeners would find this album quite enjoyable, and it is, but I just wish there were one or two more elements that didn't sound like so many other bands. The Callahan don't excite me like many other Swedish bands do. Still, they play with zest, they're capable of writing strong tunes, and you can definitely tap your foot to most of these numbers. "Hardpop" is an easy listen, if not necessarily a truly memorable one.
- Kevin Renick

The Colours Turned Red
All the way up
CCAP

Although their name alludes to something much darker, The Colours Turned Red have one of the most British sounds I've heard come from Scandinavia in a long time. This UK influence encompasses pretty much everything from the sixties onward, with songs noticeably sounding like whichever decade they are inspired from ("All the way up" from the 60s, "Birthday in bed" from the 80s, "Two on one" from the more recent 00s). While this is good for the standout tracks (add "Everybody's lost it" and "I saw her again last night" to the previously mentioned list), the rest wade in mediocrity.
- Matt Giordano

David & The Citizens
Are you in my blood?
Bad Taste Records

In their studio weblog, The Citizens were talking about how the band had become more "rocking" whilst making the new EP and LP (although later on they said the EP was more "pop"). Well, now that the EP has been released, we Citizens fans now have an idea on what the band had been up to since "Until the sadness is gone"; and if you're familiar with the track "Big chill," this is not too dissimilar. more of a distorted raw tone all around, yet keeping the level aesthetics we have all grown to love and a minimal-yet-fleshed-out sound. The closer, "Sometimes forever" is one of the prettiest songs David Fridlund has written. He and The Citizens shine so brightly on this EP, they are a band that should never be eclipsed. I'll call this another triumph for the band and I cannot wait for the new full-length.
- Matt Giordano

Familjen
s/t
Adrian Recordings

mmmm. Pretty, accessible atmospheric Swedish sounds, the type of music you would enjoy if pumped into your favourite licensed hideaway while lingering over a latte or White Russian. Opening track "Ivanhoe O Rebecka" is particularly well-suited to this. By track two, however, you feel you've been dragged up the street to the trendy, chi-chi venue where cocktails and fancy footwear are required. Track three, "Hon är fin", is a welcome return to relaxation, only to be followed by a space-age exercise in keyboard and drum machine tweakings that will have you staring into your hot cocoa in a trance, looking to the melting marshmallows for the meaning of life. A mixed bag, really, but worth rifling through if you're looking for some novel new electropop.
- Stacey Shackford

Lena Malmborg
A new time, a new life, a new religion
Crying Bob

I've been studying the female vocalists of Scandinavia with increasing attention lately. my theory is that alot of Scandi gals have a knack for diving into classic genres and redefining them from the inside out, or at least giving an extra edge to styles that often seem watered down in the US. Few things excite me more than encountering a new female vocalist who's got that edge, and so the debut solo album by Lena malmborg made me positively giddy. malmborg, a bluesy singer/songwriter from the southern Swedish town of Värnamo, tells on her website of being influenced early on by muddy Waters, and later discovering the Rolling Stones, Emmylou Harris and Dylan. But what's so cool about this album is that even though this potent combination of swing blues and gritty country is reminicent of names you probably know, malmborg has a singular style that owes little to anyone else. Her voice is both a bit raspy and texturally intoxicating. Every line she delivers goes down like a fine whiskey--you wince just slightly, then you're increasingly warmed and enveloped by the obviously pure ingredients. This is an amazingly well-produced (malmborg shared production chores with Daniel Johansson), energetically performed album. Striking just the right balance between edgy and smooth, Lena malmborg's superb album is for me, one of the nicest surprises of the year so far.
- Kevin Renick

Otur
Pepperbox hill
Vapen & Godis

I openly admit to being a pop princess, but even I need to shake my corduroy-clad booty every once in awhile. And this is just the sort of thing that will have me shimmying across the kitchen floor, waving my pot scrubber as if it were one of those goofy glo sticks. "Apart" is especially fantastic. Slip it into the stereo at the next family get-together, and you might even convince your 13-year-old niece that you've got a bit of cool in you yet. Play her "Enough" and you can also feel smug in the knowledge that you're being a good influence by contributing to her sense of female empowerment. You may already know Otur as Emma Bates, one-third of The Lightbulb Project. Her former bandmates Christina Roos and Hanna Göransson went on to form Swedish girl group Cat5, and unsurprisingly the two projects share a similar sound. But there seems to be more substance here than the Cat5 hits of the moment, "Sexy" and "Stretch and bend". A bit too much substance at the end, actually, as she tried to take me somewhere I wasn't prepared to go, at least not without a good hefty supply of chemical stimulants. Overall though, it's a winning blend of DIY electro-pop and ethereal vocals that will not only appeal to the closet dance diva – I suspect the boys will also appreciate the sweet innocence of Emma's honey voice.
- Stacey Shackford

The Radio Dept.
Pet grief
Labrador

In the endlessly fertile sonic croplands of Scandinavia, there's a certain strain of music you can harvest that might be termed "nostalgic pop." It's the kind of music that bypasses your intellect and goes straight for your emotions, albeit through a sort of gauzy filter. The Radio Dept. are ace practitioners of this sound, and their second album "Pet grief" is a sublime piece of work. It's uncanny how these Swedes know exactly what notes to hit, exactly which chord should follow THAT chord to maximize the "tingle effect" (the emotional response you have when a musical element really grabs you). This album has a remarkably cohesive mood, partly due to the organic shimmer provided by the guitars, simple keyboards and austere production, and partly from the soft, subdued vocals of Johan Duncanson. If you're into the reflective allure of what is often called "shoegaze," you can't do much better. The most immediately gripping example of The Radio Dept.'s style is "Every time," which features one of those spot-on chord progressions strummed breezily on acoustic guitars, a lullingly soft rhythm track and a subtle wall of "processed static" that struck me as the equivalent of a nostalgia portal, inviting the listener to come on through and let those stirred-up memories have their way with you for a spell. The voice really does seem to come from another time and place. "Always a relief" is also sheer perfection, everything about it as tasteful and cannily arranged as a song can be. If you're still grieving over some failed love affair, this kind of contemplative, far-off-staring album could induce tears, but if you really like to lose yourself in melancholic, dreamy Scandi-pop, you couldn't do much better than this.
- Kevin Renick

Nesrin Sen
Plenty coloured bird
Nesrin Productions

With the glut of female singer/songwriters from Sweden, It's easy to overlook the less flashy ones, especially if, like Nesrin Sen, they release their work on their own tiny label. But Nesrin's second album is deserving of a wider audience, for she's a gifted artist and a memorable emoter. Though this 10-song platter begins and ends with fairly commercial pop songs (the opening "Here and now" is both catchy and subtly melancholy), in between are some stirring compositions in which Nesrin is both unsparing lyrically and unpredictable. "I'm pissed off, don't know what I'm gonna do with you," she sings over reverberating guitar tones in the darkly acerbic "Called the murder song." Pleasing strings lighten the mood in "As the sun drifts," but then Nesrin packs a solid lyrical/musical punch in "Angel devil and I" by capturing an intensity of feeling that most artists would put a lid on. "You son of a bitch/I hope you die soon/my closest friend." The abrasive but potent honesty makes for a compelling listen, with horns adding to the coolness of the arrangement. Elsewhere, Nesrin sounds like early Joni mitchell on tunes like "If you were awake" with both the alternate guitar tuning and the deceptively sweet timbre of her voice; she's thoroughly listenable here, and daring enough to extend the track for six minutes. Good stuff...
- Kevin Renick

MP3: Red Moon - Nothing there

I don't get a lot of demos sent to me, but what I do get is often surprisingly good. And let me tell you: it's much nicer to be surprised and impressed by a nondescript CDr than it is to be let down by a mediocre, but well-packaged "pro" CD. Red moon is a duo of two sisters from Göteborg with an incredibly low profile as they've never played live before and have no proper webpage. The music they create is dreamy, ethereal, droning shoegazer pop - not too unlike Namur's most recent album (which I also fell in love with). Of course there's also plenty to link them to genre founders such as the Cocteau Twins and so forth, but I think their Swedish sense of melancholy gives them an extra edge. I've posted the first track from their four-song demo, but I strongly recommend that you myspace.com/redmoongbg" target=_blank>head over to myspace to listen to the rest. Very, very impressive!

Red Moon - Nothing there

The video for the new Bertine Zetlitz single "500" is now online: m/" target=_blank>https://www.bertine.com/