Dead People "We Love" (2022)

We Love [debut]

release date: Nov. 11, 2022

format: digital (10 x File, FLAC)

[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,42]

producer: Dead People

label: Universal Music - nationality: Sweden

Track highlights: 1. "Safety Lines" - 2. "River" - 3. "Stay Dead" - 4. "We All Fall" - 5. "Black Hole" - 6. "Life Is Good" - 7. "Kiss This Goodbye"

Studio album debut by this Swedish 'super-group' consisting of the three Swedes, Joakim Berg - former frontman of Kent, Anna Ternheim - alt. folk and singer / songwriter soloist, and Malcolm Pardon, producer, composer and former bassist of British band Kinky Machine, member of Swedish band, Girlsmen, and part of the duo, Roll the Dice. Apparently, this project is one of the many established collaborations that has come about due to COVID-19 restrictions and via networking from a personal home base. Under his own name, Pardon released his ambient and electronic solo album Hello Death in Juli '21. Berg had been writing songs for movies and other artists, and he also launched his first actual solo album Jag fortsätter glömma (May this year), and Ternheim released her most recent album A Space for Lost Time in 2019. As Dead People, the three managed to issue several singles from mid '21 until late '22 without revealing their actual identities. They were known as Mother and Two Sons, and they wrote and composed music for the Netflix film "Black Crab" by Adam Berg (Joakim's brother).

Musically, this sounds like nothing else the three have previously been involved in. Perhaps, Berg comes closest with the synthpop sound of late Kent, but here all songs have vocals by Ternheim with occassional male backing vocals by Pardon, and the music is by the three together. Stylewise it's something you would refer to as light indie pop, and the singles that were released individually from mid-'21 to mid-'22 are all included on the album.

We Love is not new musical territory. In fact, it sounds a bit like a lot of other artists, and with a style of light mainstream pop it doesn't appeal all that much to me, but it's well-executed and nicely produced music. The album contains 10 tracks and has a rather short total running time at just under 35 minutes.

[ 👍Aftonbladet 3 / 5 stars ]

Cassandra Jenkins "An Overview on Phenomenal Nature" (2021)

An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

release date: Feb. 19, 2021

format: digital (7 x File, FLAC)

[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,86]

producer: Josh Kaufmann, Cassandra Jenkins

label: Ba Da Bing! - nationality: USA

Track highlights: 1. "Michelangelo" - 2. "New Bikini" - 3. "Hard Drive" (4 / 5) (live on KEXP) - 4. "Crosshairs" - 5. "Ambiguous Norway" - 6. "Hailey"

2nd full-length album by Cassandra Jenkins follows 4 years after her fine debut Play Till You Win (Apr. 2017) and it's a relatively short affair with seven tracks and a full-length running time just above the half hour making it 10 mins shorter than the debut. So what has she been up to in all these years except from touring, releasing two live albums and getting used to a new everyday life? You may ask [answering it all by yourself that is]. Yes, perhaps the positive reception of a first album out plays a part in the relative long hiatus in between releases, 'cause how do you deal with all the positive response from music critics and music fans? - Anyhow, it does remain an uncertain detail because four years is a long time when trying to get your name out.

Now, the album is a bolder step into sophisticated art pop built on layers and inspiration from jazz and some electronica, which leaves an impression of a new approach. At least it differs from her first two releases: the stripped-down and simplistic folk-oriented and self-titled ep debut from 2013 and her 2017 full-length both appearing more closely related with one another, and then this one pointing forward to her so far finest album release: My Light, My Destroyer (Jul. 2024), which now echoes alt. folk to some extent but generally more so art pop fused with ambient electronica and the use of field recordings.

The album here contains my first ever encounter with the music by Jenkins, the phenomenal "Hard Drive", which had me thinking of an artist related to Laurie Anderson, someone perfectly capable of setting a tone, telling a story, and have music and songwriting go hand in hand in a highly original way by combining something literally with the abstract and double meanings. And "Hard Drive" is both something physical referring to storage of data on a computer and then steering a car can be a 'hard drive'. Luckily, the album comes with more than just one fine song, although, that particular one still stands as one of her finest.

Recommended.

[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5, Pitchfork 8,3 / 10, Exclaim! 4 / 5 stars ]

Veronica Maggio "Och som vanligt händer det något hemskt" (2022)

Och som vanligt händer det något hemskt

release date: May 22, 2022

format: digital (12 x File, FLAC)

[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,32]

producer: Agrin Rahmani, Simon Hassle

label: Universal - nationality: Sweden

Track highlights: 2. "Se mig" - 3. "Låt mig gå" - 5. "Varsomhelst / Närsomhelst" - 6. "Höghusdrömmar" - 8. "Förlorat mot världen" - 9. "Var är du?" - 10. "Heaven med dig"

7th studio album by Veronica Maggio following 2½ years after Fiender är tråkigt (Oct. 2019) is once again mainly produced by Rahmani and Hassle. Actually, half of the album (six tracks) with the subtitle Kapitel 1 was released as a 6-track EP as early as Oct. 2021 - this was a first half of the full albums total of 12 tracks but released in the following order: #12, #9, #2, #5, #11, and #8, and as of May 22, the full-length album was issued, though no Kapitel 2 has been released, so if you purchased the EP and only need the remaining tracks, only option is download, or to buy the full album. This is modern and smart marketing! It's almost a natural consequence that Maggio's albums top the Swedish albums chart, but she's not only popular at home, as she in Feb. 2022 reportedly was the first artist to round 1 billion streaming hits for a Swedish-language-only performer.

Then how is the new album from one of the most popular Swedish artists? It's really everything you have come to expect. Maggio goes in the obvious direction. Popularity points and off she goes! Sales numbers are probably glowing hot and live shows will be sold out, but imho, it has become too much of what we've already heard before. As Håkan Steen in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet commented in May '22: 'she has nearly become too skilled in sounding like herself'. And then this marketing smartness really is an new player. Six tracks were issued half a year earlier as promotion gimmick, which would have been sort of Okay had they released the first half but by picking a different running order makes it bothersome, and then in addition, another four new tracks were released as singles from Mar. to May as small dripples from what was to come, so when the full album finally was released, all but two songs had already been issued. That's smart isn't it?! And not really helpful for fans - and I'm not really the strongest one there, so I just awaited the full album, but still feel fans are not treated well with this bothersome initiative. Anyway, I'm not impressed by this new outing, and frankly, I find it a dull and almost mediocre reproduction of her most recent two albums - perhaps because I normally really enjoy her albums. Even the two highlighted songs "Låt mig gå" and "Var är du?" sound a bit too familiar, and you may think they were part of one of her other albums.

Not her best, but still better than most contemporary pop albums.

[ 👍Aftonbladet 3 / 5 stars ]

Papir "7" (2022)

7

release date: Jan. 14, 2022

format: digital (4 x file, FLAC)

[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,55]

producer: Lars Lundholm (rec.]; Troels Bech [mast.]; Papir [mix.]

label: Stickman Records - nationality: Denmark

Track highlights: 1. "7.1 (part I-III)" - 2. "7.2" - 4. "7.4"

7th studio album by Papir following close to three years after VI (May 2019) is the band's third album on Stickman. This new album comes with four compositions and with a total running time at nearly 41 mins. The first track - consisting of three parts - is by far the longest with a running time at almost 20 mins, whereas the three remainders are all well under 10 mins each. Also being released on vinyl, the first track takes up all of the A-side, with the three shorter tracks filling the B-side, it seems natural if all three would have been labelled '7.II (part I-III)' - but they're not. Perhaps the band just think of them as too different, or they want to have you ponder in the dark?

7 is yet another instrumental journey within a post-rock universe but it's also something new to this trio as dreampop-founded AND without the space rock characteristics. Track "7.3" is literally ambient, and that's taking it a bit too far for my taste, but they have successfully tuned down on the fabulating instrumental excess and instead found a calm and slow evolving progress, which to me, sounds as an improvement.

In my ears, this is bliss and it's also the band's so far best album.

[ bandcamp ]

[ 👉SputnikMusic 4 / 5 stars ]