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
David (Right-click “save as”)
Heaven’s on Fire (Right-click “save as”)
ONETTES. yes you got it right. When I first chanced upon them, I was thinking along the lines of the fictional band in That Thing You Do!, The ONEders. While sounding absolutely nothing like them, the Onettes have preserved the dark indie elements of 80s (the church, new order, echo and the bunnymen, the cure) and updated it for our current consumption. Well, not really an update but more of a revisit; I love how this swedish export marry the dreampop.shoegaze echo-y vocal elements with the new-wave drumming style of new order/joy division.
One criticism though: The mary onettes style of music make for at the most, 2 albums worth of listening. What happens in the 3rd (if there is a 3rd)? I cannot forsee/tolerate them having one more album that sounds almost identical as the first 2. Not unless you’re Interpol or Teenage Fanclub. But in the interest of good music history appreciation, most successful bands are able to retain their meaning and sound in the most different ways possible. I will be keeping my fingers crossed that The Mary Onettes do. For now, allow Philip Ekström and the boys remind you of how of wonderful the dark 80s sounded.
Free downloads:
Void (from S/T debut album) (right-click “save as”)
Lost (from S/T debut album) (right-click “save as”)
To be released 3rd November 2009.
