Beautiful Swedish music

Finally Im back after more than a week with a new blog post, but this time stronger than ever (or something like that...).

Just wanted to recommend a few Swedish artists with beautiful tunes on their resume.
Those are Holy Madre and Black Holy, both releasing new albums this spring. As a bonus I recommend you to check out this video with Jonathan Johansson.

/The Drumming Cat

Peter Morén in Swedish

Peter Morén from Peter Bjorn and John will soon release his new album "I spåren av tåren" (probably referring to the classic soul song "The tracks of my tears")which is the first time Peter tries his luck with using his mother tongue Swedish! As hinted by the name of the album soul is one of many influences on this album and the song "Ett land som inte är" is already a personal favourite.

Here is a video from "bibliotekspop" a couple of years ago with Peter Morén performing live at the Stockholm city library (!).

/The Drumming Cat

Love will tear us apart?

The day after Valentines day maybe love will tear us apart? Anyhow, watch this Joy Division documentary while thinking about that.

/The Drumming Cat

Valentines day

Thougt it was appropriate to put together a Spotify list of love songs in honour of this day.

Happy Valentines day!

/The Cat In Love

Edwyn Collins is home again

Found this wonderful documentary on Youtube. It is about legendary Edwyn Collins who began his career with 80s band Orange Juice (my favourite)and has since then had a solo career with for example the hugh hit "A girl like you" in the mid 90´s. In 2005 he suffered a stroke and has since then fought to recover with learning how to walk, learning the words to his songs again and also trying to fight his way back to the stage. In 2007 he finally was back on stage and this documentary follows his road back to a "usual" life again. This is part one, but there are four parts in total available on Youtube. Really glad you are back Edwyn!

/The Drumming Cat

Music Blogs shut down

Google shut down several music blogs yesterday since Google thougt they were breaking the copyright law. The sites on the other hand claims they were getting their material straight from the artists and record labels. Should I interpret this as I can never post a free song here (even If I have never did that) although it has been given to me legally by a label or an artist?

To be continued (?)

/The Worried Cat

Nick Hornby is everywhere

Just finished reading Nick Hornby´s great and latest book Juliet naked. The story takes place mostly in Gooleness, a small English town by the seaside. Annie and Duncan is a middleaged couple whose greatest thing in common is their shared fandom of Tucker Crowe, an obscure half forgotten 80s singer/songwriter, and especially the album "Juliet". When a new version of the album is released, Tuckers first release for over twenty years, called "Juliet, naked", they disagree about the quality of the album, which have consequences for their relationship and even their lives. At the same time we get to follow Tucker Crowe, whose American and lives in America, and his struggle in being a father and dealng with all sorts of ex-wives. The two stoires are then of course coming together as one eventually, but telling how would be to reveal too much information before reading it.

I recommend the book to everyone, both to those who are music nerds and those who are not, because on a deeper level its really about pre-conditions for different outcomes of a person´s life and the complicated relations people might have with different persons in different ways. But of course, if you love music, all the both comical and more serious observations Hornby´s makes on being a music fan gives the book some extra spice. Im talking for example about the relationship between an artist and his fans, how you can be so obssesive to cross the Atlantic to watch a toilet in a bar connected to Crowe or sit and talk via intenret with only a few of the other Crowe fans around the world, called crowologists. I really love this book and recommend it to everyone!

Worth noting is also that Oscar nominated movie An Education with manuscript written by Nick Hornby just have had premiere in Sweden. Nick Hornby is trully everywhere at the moment, at least today.

/The Drumming Cat

A sad week for music

Oh god, this week has not been a good one for music. At least not in Sweden. Once again the qualification rounds for who will represent Sweden at the Eurovision song contest has begun and the media will be full of this all winter and spring... You can´t hide from it no matter how hard you try to avoid it. In Sweden Eurovision is hugh (unfortunately) and I envy you who live in a country where this is not such a big deal. And it is even worse than before. Previous years there was only one competition but recent years this has been extended to four or five televised qualification rounds.

The bad music week continued on Tuesday while studying at a café in Stockholm (studying music and media). I am not exaggerrating, I must have heard a Lady Gaga song sort of two times every hour. This resulted in that those irritating words got stuck in my mind for the rest of the day and the following day: "Ga-ga olala"... It is one of those artists where it seems like they have intentionally repeated the same words in a song for about 2000 times so that people will remember it and buy it. An almost amazing stereotype of a pure product.

As if this was not enough Warner music announced they will break their deal with Spotify with free streaming of their music catalogue. Fortunately this proved to be a misunderstanding as Warner meant that it wasn´t profitable doing this kind of buissness at the moment, but that Warner will continue to corporate with Spotify. According to Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet there are also plans on launching Spotify in the Us.

/The Drumming Cat

Beach House

Looking forward to buy and listen to this album, the new one from Beach House, which Pitchfork describes as the most "listenable" of them all, which I assume is suppose to be a positive judgement, but a strange choice of word, of course you can listen to their other albums as well...

/The Drumming Cat

I Felt this was perfect pop

My latest new music crush is on this wonderful indiepop band called The Afternoon Naps with influences from, according to themselves, Felt and Shop Assistans. And sure, one can´t argue about those similarities. Anyhow, this is perfect pop, just like Felt.Is "Rain of Crystal Spires" one of the best songs of the 80´s?

Felt have also influenced my earlier recommendation Cats on Fire, which besides the way they use organ in their music, can be discovered in their song title "I am the White Mantled King" most likely referring to the Felt song "Dismantled King is off the throne".

/The Drumming Cat

Is it Summer already?

We are right now experiencing a Winter revival in Sweden, since there is so much snow on the ground and it must have been years and years ago we had a Winter like this. With much snow, grey dull days and the feeling that the evening begins just shortly after you have eaten lunch (sort of, the days are very short right now), it is good to find something that makes you forget about the cold Swedish Winter and fool the brain to believe it is Summertime and the livin´s easy. That thing is a new album from a very hyped band.

A couple of days ago I bought the new Vampire Weekend album "Contra". The last album was in my mind perhaps album of the year and "Contra" certainly does not make me less of a fan. More on the contrary, this album really has the potential to on the critics "best of 2010"-lists at the end of the year. The influences of classical music and afropop and world music are still there, but in my mind there are a lot mote energetic songs this time and the quality of the songs have also grown.

This is an album where no track really can be considered to be weak and the energy in this album combined with the quality makes me wana pose two questions: 1. Is it Summer already? 2. Has the album of the year already been released?

/The Drumming Cat

The Swedish tongue

Swedish pop has raised much attention outside the countrie´s borders for some time now, but these songs are of course most often sung in English. Infact there is also a lot of great music with Swedish lyrics. No news to Swedes, but maybe for residents outside Sweden, are these artists which I have collected in a Spotify-playlist. All the songs are performed by artists who uses their Swedish mother tongue to create great music. Maybe its impossible for a foreigner to listen to these wonderful tunes and appreciate it the same way as I do. For example, one time when I was visiting Italy and i asked someone how it sounded for that person when I spoke Swedish, the answer was not that flathering: "Like drugdealers" was the answer. Hopefully the rest of the world dont share that view and instead think that it sounds that Scandinavianpeople sing (which I have also heard), which would suit the purpose of this blog post a lot better...

For those of you that dont have Spotify,I must specifically recommend these artists: Jonathan Johansson , Markus Krunegård, Anna Järvinen and (Ingenting).

Perhaps the most spectacular is the group Movits!. Listen and understand for yourself why...

here you can also watch Movits talking to Stephen Colbert and perform live on his show: Colbert talking to Movits, Movits performing .

Hoppas ni uppskattar detta! (Hope you appreciate this!)

/The Drumming Cat

Germany, Sweden and USA

Some new good stuff from acts Lali Puna of Germany, Ved of Sweden and new band Happy Birthday from USA with their only song "Girls FM" available so far. Hopefully there is more to come.

/The Drumming Cat

The Swedish model

These two clips may be a bit old old, but they are still relevant: Part 1, part 2. And very funny. As Barack Obama tries to push for reforms in the Us, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart makes fun of the ridiciliuos arguments from critics claiming USA is turning into a "Socialist Sweden"...

Historically the Swedish system has been referred to as "The Swedish model", which is also the name of this great organisation consisting of six Swedish independent record labels. Their aim is to create a reasonable debate about the future for music and the music industry, for example considering file-sharing. I get the feeling they want to close the gap between producers and consumers and reach an understanding between them. The answer is not to sue people who download music illegally, but try to figure out how industry and consumers can adjust to the new times that is already a fact. Visit The Swedish model web site and embrace their ideas and download some of their music for free: Perfectly legal!

/The Drumming Cat