The first track “Tomorrow You’ll Be Forgiven…” is magic to me. A Satie-sounding minimalistic piano figure, a simple, but beautiful song melody, Jesper’s dark, low-voiced vocals and “…but tomorrow you will have your teeth knocked out” which feels just like a hit right in the solarpexus, in the middle of the warm safe ambience.

“April Archives Collection No 1″ is a compilation of three of Jesper Norda’s earlier EP:s, 12 songs with only Jesper and his piano and sometimes a simple drum machine. No excesses, as simple as possible, but it never gets uninteresting. The melodies are not revolutionizing but set inside my head, both from the vocals and the piano figures. I hear David Sylvain, Leonard Cohen, Roger Waters in different contexts, but in the end his own unique character.

You can find Jesper Norda on his site or on Myspace. You can also listen on Spotify.

Tomorrow you´ll be forgiven but tonight you will have your teeth knocked out
Lets go to a place infected with truth and resist with all our hearts

They get their Influences from the nineties alternative grand pop and rock scene, shoegaze and post-rock, and also from contemporary bands like The Arcade Fire, Explosions In the Sky and The National.

You can find Another Nation’s National Anthem on Myspace and on Facebook.

Save Them From Sorrow
Thundercars

The new album continues where the former albums left us, with singer/songwriter with a postgrunge feeling, strong melodies and of course Chris special voice in the foreground. But it contains much more than this. The melodies are there, the hooks, and the postgrunge vibes too, but these vibes have left more and more space for other influences, like folk music, the sixties and indie rock, which is all nicely blended with the rest.

If you’re already a fan you will recognize Chris Michols, but at the same time experience a more varied, strong album. Listen more on Chris Michols Band’s site. Here are two tracks from “Scar Trek”:

Killer
Loser

“Maybe as if Springsteen and Steve Earle got into eating falukorv (typical swedish working-class grub), hanging down the pub at Bagarmossen (run-down suburb south of Stockholm), after a hard days work.” This is to be read at the homepage of Pär Enqvist Band and if you never listened to the music you might laugh indulgently at those pretensions but hell if it’s not a wrap-up making the rest of this text rather needless.

Raka rör (straight pipes, or something to that effect…) as the legendary scanian rocker Kal P Dal would have been content to conclude, still pensive as well as anguished at times.

Pär Enqvist doesn’t invent his music but fills it with himself so that after a while it feels like it was for him it was always looking…and what I’m maybe trying to say with this is that no matter how strong and unmistakable the roots we have still never seen this particular plant before. We know precisely what he’s been listening to and grown out of; still while we’re listening it’s as if he’s actually the original.

It’s so strong and coherent, and though the producer Max Lorentz (Ronander, Rickfors, Kim Larsen…) undoubtedly put his mark here we recognize ourselves. It’s a long yet too short journey through sorrow and lust, gloominess and confusion and sudden relieving grins, it’s hard and and relentless, nostalgic and delightful, it contains the whole range from tenderness and respect and honours to a contempt so dense that blood is drawn.

There are tunnel-visioned desperados and jailbirds and battered women and abandoned children and…reluctant pensioners and dogmatists and safety junkies and daredevils, shying dogs and arrogants and lovers gone astray - all of them ultimately of course looking for the same thing - some kind of a home.

The opening “Det här tåget går nu” (This train is leaving now), so bursting with bulldog spirit and never-say-die that you dont get your bearings straight til you’re already aboard, having left the station.

“Längtar efter dej” (Longing for you) is about lacking and wanting, as the title suggests, and “Belos” is a kind of rapidly sailing ballad about swapping one life for another.

“Även hjältar måste dö” (Even heroes must die) about getting stuck in self-sufficient defiance is a personal favourite with its poprocky rolling holding its ever-so slightly lecturing sternness.

“Dom som går” (Those who go) might with its snug rattle of widely disparate people with the very same dreams stand as a conclusion of the entire CD.

“Samma gamla misstag” (The same old mistake) - about running into the same wall over and over again, an almost but only almost resigned song about the impossible (?) togetherness, leading to “Det är för sent” (It’s too late) which supposedly is another variation on the same theme, i.e. a dirge over lost possibility but with an up-tempo beat that is looking ahead, refusing to give in more than temporarily to sentimentality.

During the three minutes and fourteen seconds that are called “Det var inte mitt fel” (It wasn’t my fault) we even have time to be scared; I cant actually recall a song as filled with contempt as this one. Which is of course fascinating as well - it is not often that our songwriters dare to open that door, more than ajar, possibly.

“Svårt att va människa ibland” (Hard to be human at times) is pc-rock or what to call it at its most effective, it`s honest and it bleeds, it’s sad and it’s furious, it’s Magnus Lindberg in the twentyfirst century.

In the astonishingly sensitive “Prygelland” (Land of flogging) a woman, for years half beaten to death, finally gets her impossible uncertain revenge, and music and lyrics have never been more symbiotic.

“Allting faller isär” (Everything falls apart) is yet another song about starting over, possibly the mainest of threads on the record.

As for the closing title-song “Utanför lagen” (Outside the law) you will really have to listen for yourselves…

The drums of Richard Ahl and the bass of Jens Åslund drives and urges and the guitars of Sören Dahlgren - I hear them in a slight breeze over Riddarfjärden (Knights Bay of central Stockholm), always exactly the curlicues wanted by the song.

And then: the Voice…

Listen more on Pär Enqvist Band’s site or on Spotify and visit them on on Facebook.

Även hjältar måste dö (Desperado)
Prygelland
Utanför lagen

I fell directly for the song “July”, and it’s hard not to fall in love with the nice folk-pop arrangement they have created. With guitars and ukulele they create a happy sing-along feeling which stick in my mind.

Crying Day Care Choir - July

In the beginning of this summer they released the 13-track debut album “First Time”, which you can listen to on Spotify. You can also meet Ellinor & 5th Season on Myspace.

Here are a couple of songs from “First Time”:

Why Does a Good Thing Have to End
First Time

And it’s Vampyramiden’s ambition to deliver these kinds of stories in this format. They have promised a singel on the same theme in the end of the summer and you can keep track of this at Vampyramiden’s Myspace page.

Here are the two first chapters of “Tåglånet” (in Swedish). The following three is available on their Myspace page where you can also download the EP for free.

En stad och en trollkarl
Vi åker genom Sverige (med tåg)

Until now. The story doesn’t say if they’ve been locked inside the studio since then, but I do know that they have released a new singel from the upcoming album “The Shadow”.

“Learning to Die” is the name of the song, and it’s a great piece. To me it becomes a nice mix of Queen, Supertramp and a big chunk of Bowie in a cool arrangement with beautiful vocals. There is a bonus track also, in quite a different style, so it’ll be very interesting to see later on how the album will sound.

Learning to Die
State of Grace

You can find Street Fighting Man on Myspace or on Facebook (where you also can listen to previews of several songs from the album).

Here’s the video to the debut singel “Raise It”, från 2008:

He gets help from a number of guests on the album, among them some well-known names like Bruce Kulick (Kiss), Brian Robertson (Thin Lizzy, Mötörhead), Conny Bloom (Hanoi Rocks, Electric Boys), Ian Haugland (Europe) and Zinny Zan (Shotgun Messiah, Zan Clan), which also gives us a hint to what kind of music it’s about. And of course it’s about hard rock, more precisely the eighties’ hard rock.

It becomes Chris’ own special version of the eighties where he, between sticky rock choruses, glammy choirs and guitar solos, weaves in some metallic darkness and agressive energy. All in all an even and strong album, where Chris shows his strength as a songwriter.

I saw him live at Stockholm Rockout the 1st of May, which was one of the best performances on the festival. Obviously more people agreed with me as he will come back for Stockholm Rockout Festival part 2 on the 10th-11th of September.

You can find Chris Laney on his site, on Facebook and on Myspace. His albums are available on Spotify. Here are two tracks from “Only Come Out at Night”.

Only Come Out at Night
Rockstar

This May he released the single “It Leaves Me Worried”, a song that breathes fifties rock, and earlier this year the album “Nerve”, a collection of songs with the same lo-fi sound, caught on his tape recorder at home, and serves us pop gems, country and fifties rock. A little like if Buddy Holly, Neil Young and John Lennon met in someones home and recorded outtakes for their new album.

All tracks can be heard and downloaded on Shotgun Language’s Bandcamp page. You can also meet Shotgun Language on Myspace.

It Leaves Me Worried

You can find Pearl Fiction on Myspace

The Ruby Fever

The Ruby Fever:

Meet Baron Bane on Facebook.

Sordid Eyes

And a really good album it is, with large span of styles and moods. The two first songs “The Life Home” and “Parking Lot Paradise” are that kind of pop songs that’s impossible to ignore and repeat themselves in your mind with their melody hooks.

After that she exhibit a rich gallery from grand orchestral pop to intimate ballads, all sung with a voice that has it’s own character and luster; a somewhat dark blues-souly voice with stains of both attitude and softness.

Here are two songs from “The Life Home”:

The Life Home
Coming Down

Parking Lot Paradise:

Listen more to Birgit Bidder on her site or on Myspace.

He sneaks away into the Mississippi delta, he takes a tour to Amsterdam, he let the blues take a stroll along childhood lanes and relationships and even have a look at an old pocket watch. It’s naked and straight on and no excessive outbreaks. And just like with the other album, I feel a nice mellow warmth, and especially in the more melodic storytelling songs, I get a feeling of John Hiatt, who also have a special way of spreading warmth around him.

Here are two tracks from “Myself and Mine”:

Journey to the Delta
My Precious Stone

You can find Brian Kramer on his Myspace page and on his site

Basically it’s about a warm, melodious electronica; synth pop with some strokes of indie with messy guitars. Degrees consists of the duo Mikael Jacobson and Rickard Folke, both hailing from the deep forests around Tranås, where they formed Degrees in 2008.

You can listen to their EP:s on their Bandcamp page and also visit them on their site. Here are two tracks from “Pt III”:

Can’t Walk Thru This Alone
Young & On the Run

It’s about Oskar Gyllenhammar and his tour “100 gigs 100 days”, which he started the 17th of May. Just before that he also released a single, a first taste of an upcoming album this fall. You can listen to the song, “Inga roller och manér”, here below.

The tour “100 gigs 100 days” started in the end of May with a number of gigs in Stockholm, and it’s not hard to understand from the name of the tour, that it’s about doing a gig each day until the 24th of August. But it doesn’t stop there; the ambition is to visit each region in Sweden and also visit the neighbouring countries Norway, Denmark and Finland, at least once.

On top of this, Oskar is also engaged to entertain at Café August in Hudiksvall each Thursday during summer. The gigs so far has been quite a variation, from club concerts, to festival gigs, to improvised park concerts.

This fun trip and it’s story is told on a special site for this tour, with film clips, photos and stories. If you want him to come and play, you can contact him on this site. (in Swedish though)

Read more about Oskar on his site (in Swedish).

Inga roller och manér

Inga roller och manér (acoustic):

Here are “We Come From the Stars”, featuring Annelie, to listen to and download. And below, the latest video, “The Loneliest Figure”. Go to Obliq’s Youtube channel to follow them.

We Come From the Stars

The Loneliest Figure:

It’s pop/rock in Swedish, where they paint grand, slightly mellow pictures. And all is told by Daniel Månstråles vocals which gives it all that little extra touch of drama.

Here are two songs to listen to:

Ingen förstår oss ändå
Citodon

Visit Skadade ljud on Facebook

It will be interesting to see what My Closest Friend will come up with next. You’ll find the band on Myspace and on Facebook. Here are the songs:

Air
Real Time

Of course you get a better view of a band when you can listen to an entire album, but it’s a little hard anyway to catch The Open Up and Bleeds. Makes it even more interesting for me, as I’m served a lot of variation from dirty, messy rock with a heavy drive in high speed, to slower, more tense and dark songs.

It’s The Stooges, Neil Young-rock, a rawer This Perfect Day and maybe some early The Cure too. As I said, it’s not available yet, but I really hope it will be soon. Meanwhile you can visit the band on their Myspace page and on Facebook. Here’s a song and also a video from the album:

This Noise

OK Is Not OK:

Others about The Open Up and Bleeds: Absolut Noise, Buck Theorem’s Hide-out