Hallå!

No prizes for guessing what that meant (in Swedish!). Whilst doing a google on Sweden and its music scene, I found out that they had as many (or if not more) blackdeathmetalhardcore bands than their pop counterparts: Carnage, Pain of Salvation and Bloodbath to name a few. Betcha didn’t know, did you?

And on the not-so-dark-side of things, we started with ABBA (70s), Roxette (80s-90s), and then finished up with Ace of Base and The Cardigans before the turn of millennium. Fast forward into the indie noughties, we have  Jens Lekman, The Knife, PBJ, Juniorboys and the Radio Dept. flying the flag for Sweden these days.

What started out as a duo in 1995 (incidentally also one of their tracks from the Lesser Matters Album), Radio Dept. then became a quintet and eventually now a trio consisting of Johan Duncanson, Martin Larsson and Daniel Tjader. Because of the basic elements of the dreampop or shoegaze sound that Radio Dept. embraces: fuzzy distortion and airy-and-not-so-decipherable vocals, they are often compared to Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine.

15 years on: 2 albums, an inclusion onto Marie Antoinette’s OST and many EPs later, Clinging to a Scheme finally gets released following a 4-year break after Pet Grief in ’06. Although nothing ground-breaking this time round, the band has been quietly refining their own soft-focus, shoegaze-indebted sound, occasionally adding drum machines or synthesizers for a slight change of pace.

Still signed under Labrador Records, the band continues to adhere to what the label stands for: melodic, indie-pop from sweden. On the tracks we love: Memory Loss, sounds like what Phoenix did with their Alphabetical album. David, carries the almost exact backing beats as one of the many Jens Lekman songs. This sort of borrowing may not expand any horizons, but that matters little when, like here, it’s all done right.

Hej då! see you this sat!

Perfect for: Coming down

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Radiodept.

David (Right-click “save as”)

Heaven’s on Fire (Right-click “save as”)