Thee Power Of Twee

Yeah, forgot to mention. I came across a page called Twee Pop Love today. After reading a bit there and listening to some of the songs, it seems a great place to keep an eye on! And I really should put up some more links, I´ll do it later today or maybe tomorrow.

Now is later today, the links will propably come up tomorrow. But here is a link thehelpmeplease - “hear the bells ring” , this is what I have been needing, this is what I have been wanting! Maybe Jonas (who is thehelpmeplease) would like to join me for a christmas of music. We could start with Low - “Christmas”, continue with the “50.000.000 elves fans can´t be wrong” compilation and end with the TGR “Christmas twee” compilation. What do you say?!

It started earlier this year with The Pipettes, I read about them, listened to a song. Forgot about it with the hint that I did not quite like what I heard (which often is the case with me, then I later on learn that I love it). But I could still not hold myself, so I got myself a copy of the now outsold 7″. Now I have all the records from Total Gaylord Records, and I am loving them! A couple of days ago the first real snow fell, the ground is now white and I am sitting here by the window listening to The Snow Fairies - “Get married”. The first song that I heard from it was “Baja California” on a TGR-sampler. It was instant love. Since I do not have any of their previous releases they were kind of a unwritten page for me, but I knew that two of the members were in Men In Fur, which I think are great. So it was bound to be good. And I am right now playing it on repeat, think it is on its third run by now, so it is good! The mentioned song “Baja California” is as the recordlabels homepage say, something that would want to make you dance (makes me think of a blog called indie don´t dance), guitars, bass, organ, drums and then Rose Bochansky´s singing on it. Upbeat, giving me a high everytime (which makes me think of the intro to People Under The Stairs - “O.S.T.”). Then the second song is even better! I must say that I love all the 12 tracks. The upbeat-tempo. The sweet voice of Rose and the sweet lyrics. Some of the other songs contain girl/boy-singing which can never be wrong.

But enough of my blabber (babbel in Swedish for those who have woundered about the word, think I have written it somwhere here), here are two songs to make up your mind, #1 and #4 :

The Snow Fairies - “Baja California”

The Snow Fairies - “The life of a total square”

You would by now want to check them out a bit more (that is if you did not know about them since before) so here is a link to: TGR and The Snow Fairies

I was not going to write today, but I just could not keep quiet about this.
I mentioned El perro del mar when I wrote about BikerBoy. She has a new ep out now on Hybris. The mp3 from it promises songs as great as her previous ones, if not better! Right now loving it. The ep is called “You gotta give to get”

El perro del mar - “God knows (you gotta give to get)”
And here is the titletrack. Enjoy!

Några ord…
Ja, några ord helt enkelt.

Lade till några ord, från i somras, efter en färd med tunnelbanan. Några till ord…

Lately I have questioned my ability to accomplish anything. It feels practically like I am incapable of doing anything. And there is no inspiration to be found. This combined with the fact that I have worked a lot lately, and often work strange hours, has made it a struggle just to manage answering a mail.
But soon thing will get better! I sincerely hope so… But at times like these there is always a song that makes your heart wake up, that opens your eyes to the world of your thoughts, that makes your eyes water and your body to want to just melt into the ground. This song for me right now is a song that I have loved with whole of my heart since the first time I heard it. There has not been a time when I have listened to it that I have not played it at least one more time since it ended. The song is
Tompot Blenny - “Thinking of ways of keeping you warm”

Do you have a song that you can not just listen to once, a “repeat” song. A song that, though it has been played hundreds of times, never seem to die. Then write it as a comment. If many write them up I will have a mixed-cd out of this world!

And thank you for taking your time with a sob like me.

If you have not noticed I like the music from Sweden a lot. But when I come to think about it, I have not written all that much about swedish music. But that will change, at least I think hehe.

Earlier this week I got my hands on a record that I was told I might like. I took it in my hands, tilted my head a bit, looked at the cover and quite liked what I saw.

Then I put in the cd-player, put the headphones on and pressed play. The first thing that met me was some picking on a guitar and a bass, drums kicking in… Another guitar. I propably thought “hope the vocals are good, hope the vocals are good” (vocals are important). After a quite long intro the voice comes in, I can feel my body relax as the blood in my vains stops for a splitsecond as my heart skipes a beat.
With the record came a small note from the label/distributor. I looked at it and saw that the lovely vocals belonged to Maja Zetterberg and Elia Almegård.(Another look and I see that it is a all girl band. Not that it matters, but fun). The second song begins, I start thinking that they sound like something that I like, and yes, once again it is, as with The Arrogants, that I hear a hint of the lovely, lovely The Sundays. Then when I took a closer look at the note I saw that it said: “…among the influences you can hear…… like Cat Power, early Ride, Lush and Sundays.” The note ends with: “with one foot in shoegaze britain and the other in mellow america” and for the first time (not that I have read 100´s of notes like this one, but at least 50-150) I feel that the note from the label/distributor describes the music just right. I have right now listened to it about ten times and it just keeps growing on me.

Lane - “A secret”
#2 from the record.

Lane - “Turn off the lights”
#4, and I forgot to mention that it contains nine songs. And to get to their label; Ssschuitt
For Lane´s homepage you have it here, Lane. And once again, if you like what you hear, make sure to buy it and support these women. Take care.

My relationship with Hybris started with their first releases, among them was this girl who blew me away, she called herself El perro del mar. Since those days they have continued to release records that I like. Quite weard though, I think their best releases have been those made on cd-r. But I guess that is just how it goes, can not say I did not shead a tear when I heard what Sibiria had done with their lovely songs. This is what happens when you have pressure and expectations on your shoulders? Or is it the fact that you get to have a producer and a studio, I do not know.
But what I do know is that the music that Peter Lundbergh makes as BikerBoy, it is great! I had read about the release, it was said to be “like a Morrissey on speed”, hmm I thought. Then I downloaded the mp3 on their webpage, it was called “Heart”. Now I have two. And now I also have the cd-r, named “Heart”. It is the first song on it, there you can not really hear the Morrissey similarities. A great song though! Click on the link at the end of the post and hear for yourself!
The second song continues in quite the same spirit, still I can not find my Morrissey there. Well, somewhere in the background, far, far away. Then the third song comes, “you live your life, like the worst case scenario, you think you are so lycky now, but just wait, just wait…”, now Morrissey has left his guitarguys at home and started doing music on his own with a big fat stamp on it called “sweden 2005″. The fourth song is like a song that was made for “You are the quarry”, but it was number 55 and only 12 made it.
So yes, I agree with those who said that you could hear some Morrissey in there. But in this case it is not bad, not at all like with the horrible Boys! But not the best I have heard, but still, Heart is a great song. The EP lives on just by it if you ask me. A bit sad to say so, I had hopes for this one after hearing it. Well, these things happen. Download the song and make up your own mind, if you like what you hear, buy the record.

Bikerboy - “Heart”

ps. how many times did I write Morrissey? Feels like I did it all the time. ds

Yesterday I wrote for quite a while about film. Mostly about the one that was my sunday film. “When I turned nine”. If you have a great computer that shuts down when you are just about finished, it makes you give up. At least for the moment. So you will not get to read about my love for asian movies, especially the ones from Korea after 2000.
Well, today is a new day, or the day has gone, it is night by now, but still. I bought a new movie today! One that I was not going to see, just because I had memories with the original. By the way it seems like I am the only one who has seen it. Not even my sister had seen it, and we did not exacly have loads of tvs when we grew up! Well, well. It was “Charlie and the chocolate factory”. During the film I thought that it was like “Fear and loathing las vegas” just without the drugs hehe. Think about it next time you see it, that is if you have seen fear and loathing. Hmm, enough about that.

Now I am going to do something that I have been wanting to do, but I have not found the words for it. I have still to find them. But I will give it a shot.

Toothfairy - “Formative”

It is for me a whole new label, and a whole new artist. Can not really explain to myself how I did not know of the label, they have after all released The Decemberists. Well, these things happen.
I have to say that this will not be as good as it could be (bad even coming from me!), I wish I would have listened to the record 20 times before writing about it. One of the things with mp3 and not having empty cd-rs at home. Walking home from work saturday listening to “Fonica” instead of this one, I could feel the music sweep my feet away. Fragile electronic sounds with some guitar strings, it is hard not to go into a dreamy mode. This is what I thought this would sound like, but with vocals. Instead I noticed that the text I had written in my head, which would lead to this record, was no good. The fact is that this is not fragile electronica. This is instead laptop-pop in the likes of The Postal Service, if you ask me it might even be better at times! This kind of music is right now the SHIT in sweden, meaning that it is just the right sound right now, along with euro/disco/pop-tunes. The record kickes off with “Kicked outta the band”, which would right now be a quite good reply to “The Radio Dept. - “I don´t need love I´ve got my band” (if you do not know why, mail me and I´ll give you an explanation=). The second song is called “Down in the developments”, and it is the best one on the record right now. The beat is right now making me sit here and dance, and the different sounds on it are just great (a headache and a crappy dictionary is a reason to not find better words than “sounds” hehe). The vocals of Chad Crouch are just perfect for the tunes, especially in the more uptempo songs. The lyrics is the thing that makes these 9 songs stand out from a lot of other laptop music. They cover a lot of fields, and not just the regular ones. They seem a bit cynical and contain a hint of irony, this is just at times and right now sitting here with my headphones on. Who knows, they may sound different tomorrow. If so, you can be sure that I will let you know.
Well, enough of my crappy writing, listen to some songs, buy the record (becouse you will like the songs).

Toothfairy - “Kicked outta the band”

Toothfairy - “Don´t sweat it”

That was it, hope you like them as much as I do. It is a shame I can not put a link to “Down in the developments”, but hopefully you will buy the cd and hear it anyway. HUSH has by the way a sale, so the prices are low. That was about it, I do not have the right feeling right now, otherwise I would have written more and better. Who knows, maybe I will go in and change things during the week. Well, take care! Yeah, almost forgot, here is a link to HUSH-records

Have been working a lot, so I have not had time to write here… But now it will change! Today I am too tired to write, but tomorrow I will have time and strenght to it. I have some fun things to write about (fun things for me is music hehe, sometimes I wonder about my life… then I put on a song and smile). Well, untill tomorrow.

Still not a proper post. I was going to write something, I had already written it in my head. I was just to sit down here and type it. But that will not happen, at least not now. Right now I am thinking that I should take one more day, to make it a bit more proper. Not so much for you, I meen, it does not matter if it takes me 10 minutes or 10 days to write a text, it is still the same. But I want to be sure I am not missing something, something that would bug me later on.
So instead you have a small text called “Lite babbel”, and that is just what it is. You can find it here