When you see reviews of music, especially in fanzines and indie magazines, you see a lot of name dropping. It’s pretty annoying, especially when the band name that is dropped are from the obscure bands that some person was in in high-school that never made any records because the name dropping is then only there to show the reviewers deep knowledge of what amounts to useless trivia.

But often the name dropping comes from the fact that following names can lead you to good music. For example, today I suddently found myself wondering who did the backing vcals on Bat For Lashes “Trophy”. Well, it’s Josh Pearson, who’s claim to fame is being the song writer in a band called Lift To Experience. So I looked up their MySpace page, and listen to the three songs there. And they are good. So, by the obscure name dropping feature, I found some good music! See, it has a purpose!

Lift To Experience is a bit of a shock. Not their music in itself. But this is a bunch of people fanatically devoted to Texas writing Christian songs. There is normally no chance in hell this could be good. Fanatical Texans write songs like “All my Ex’s Live in Texas” and sing with a horribly nasal drone to music with steel guitar and violins in them. Nothing wrong with steel guitar or violins, it’s just the music that combine the two tends to be horribly bad country. And we all know that Christian music is boring crap, based on the idea that if you just embrace Jesus you don’t have to care about the fact that nobody loves you and your life sucks, becuse Jesus will fix your life for you so you will be happy. After you are dead. And this is somehow fantastic news that need singing about a lot.

But Lift To Experience is nothing like that. It’s massive droning alternative rock that has very little to do with either country or gospel, and thankfully doesn’t have one inch of Christian fusion jazz-rock in it. It should be impossible for Christian Texas do do this, but I guess this either proves that God doesn’t exist, or he moves in very mysterious ways indeed. Although their one and only album, they have now split up apparently, must be the ugliest in existence. I guess this is a homage to their Christian Texan roots.

Check it out. You will probably hate it, but I don’t. Now I’ll
have to figure out where I can buy the album.

While I was in London this week I was invited to a showcase of artists at My Place by my friend and DJ Kinetic P (catch him on Push FM) I missed the start, and didn’t see all the artists, but this I can say: Keep an eye out for Tam Walker and Jnay, who were the artists that stood out.

Tam Walker has the combination of great voice and stunning looks that is needed in the tough business of soul music. She already is cooperating with some good songwriters and have a good set of songs, some with definite hit-feeling.

Last on, and as I understood it, not part of the Showcase, but an extra treat, was Jnay. He has a great voice, and loads of carisma, and a bunch of good songs. The recordings on his myspace page doesn’t make justice to the live performance, and I think that a good producer should be able to channel the live charisma into the studio recordings.

I’m telling you now: Keep your eyes on these two!

Just so you don’t think that all Swedish music is bad or intentionally pathetic, I have to make some advertising for the Swedish band Detektivbyrån. They have made one of my current favourite albums, the Hemvägen EP. Check out the title song, here played live on Swedish TV.

Yes, it’s swedish folkmusic, mixed with french chansons, and electronica. Unique, melodious and awesome. Go bloody buy the album.

Nine Inch Nails now join Radiohead as experimenting with alternative revenue models. The new album, Ghosts, is available to buy online either as downloads for five dollars or as a double CD for ten dollars. You can also download the first part of the album for free via BitTorrent.

I’m listening to it right now, and a review is most likely in a couple of days.

Todays little indie-music spotting: The very cute and reasonably amusing game “Potty Mouth Ninja” has Architecture in Helsinki’s song “Do the Whirlwind” as background music. It’s a recreation with cheap synths, I think, it doesn’t sound exactly the same, but it’s good enough to raise the enjoyment of the game a couple of notches! Play it!

Oh, and if you haven’t heard Architecture in Helsinki, you should listen to them to. When it comes to cute quirky pop you don’t get much cuter and quirkier. Highly recommended.

Beneath the seven different reasons for satellites
Eleven different reasons for fists in fights
There’s never been a reason for shouting when
It’s quiet
But no-one’s ever listening.
— “Need to Shout”

In Swedish indie rock there has long been a trend of having singers that can’t sing. This trend got started with Broder Daniel. A band that write pop songs with the same musical skill as your average twelve year old. But because they (or at least the out of tune singer) were cute and cool they got wildly popular, and the trend got started, and often propagated by Broder Daniel members leaving the band an starting a solo career in singing badly.

It is in fact, much easier to become a respected indie talent in Sweden, if you suck. Case in point, new Swedish mainstream underground indie pop megastars Laakso.

Laakso does have a singer who mostly sings horribly out of tune with a whiny annoying voice. But sometimes he forgets himself, and sings in tune. Also, the songs are often pedestrian in quality, but with occasional bright sparks. But most of all, the lyrics are so pathetic, immature and stupidly bad that it must be intentional.

Maybe it’s a trick? Songs like their single “Västerbron” has decent chorus. But the verses are so pathetic that it’s really hard to not turn off. But if you succeed, the contrast between the stupefying low mark of “You look great…thanks!” means that the chorus comes as a huge relief, and you are immensly happy to no longer be in pain.

I’m starting to suspect that the guy can sing properly, but doesn’t want to just to make it sound better when he actually does sing in tune. And of course, the suspicions of intentional patheticness doesn’t exactly get lower when considering the fact that they used to be quite good. Check this from 2003, for example:

Notice the lack of suckage. He sings pretty much in tune, the English accent is suddenly much better, and the decent lyrics.

Sure, it’s often said that mainstream music is bad. But by that is usually meant bland, uninteresting and manufactured. Not so in Sweden. There you can more easily get a hit if you intentionally sing and play badly and wrote daft songs with kindergarten lyrics.

It’s a strange country. I’m happy I moved.

Time to start this blog up for real. And I’m gonna start with plugging a fantastic song. Is There a Ghost by rising indie stars Band of Horses. Amazing stuff.

The video is about stealing pillows.

Another oldie from the hard drive. This is about a real person, and yes, she has indeed since gotten married.

The arrangement on this one was tricky to get right, but it worked out in the end. I tried to make a song that for once had a chorus you could sing along too, which I guess means, this is the “single”. Hah!

Again, it’s my friend Pär singing.

Northern Shores - Marry Me

I’ll start with some old stuff, to clear out the hard drive. This is an old, old song in an old recording and a not so old mix. The main singer is a friend of mine but the singing during the outro is me. I’m pretty happy with the slightly unusual arrangement on this one, and how it succeeds to be complex and sparse at the same time. The long outro was originally meant to just be a fade to silence, but it inspired me to add new lyrics to the end, and I liked how the recording in the slowly falls to pieces, so I kept all of it. It means the song is quite long, but that’s what happens sometimes.

Northern Shores - Desert Lullaby

OK, so I have been thinking that it could be fun to have more people listen to my music. So I’m going to upload it here in irregular intervals. There will be sad sea-shanties and sad attempts of doing dance-music. There will also be a lot of whining about stupid music and daft lyrics. You have been warned.

A note on copyright: I’m way to old to longer harbor any dreams of being a rock-star, and the internet is making music free anyway, so you are welcome to download my songs and share as you like. But I still wrote the songs, so if you want to do a cover, a remix, or for some unfathomable reason, sample it, tell me first.

Thats it! Enjoy!