Norway has quite a few bands that are refugees from the tyranny of jazz school (Pom Poko, Mall Girl et al), and Malmö band Kluster brought the trend to Sweden. The band released their well-received debut album Civic last year, and now they’re moving onto the next step. New single Wild is the first to arrive from the group’s post-Civic period, and we’re delighted to premiere it for you here today.
What Wild maybe represents for the band is a step beyond Civic for the band stylistically too. A lot of the thrill of that record came from the band’s ability to make hairpin turns mid-song, their jazz-school smarts letting them swerve suddenly from calm to chaos. Wild resists making rapid shifts and switches. Instead, there’s a smooth consistency to it, with Linnea Hall’s graceful vocal the base around which the song is built, while her bandmates sketch in the details on keys and guitar in the background. Then the musical muscle comes in on the outro, but here it’s used to ease the song gently over the line, rather than in a sudden storm. So Kluster – still as arty as ever, but Wild moves their sound towards soaring rock music. You can listen below with the video by Angelina Petrovic and Jonna Jansson. The band say:
Wild is about the harvest of wild berries, giving you stains that never go away. But also about the longing for the fox that lives alone in the wild. In Chinese culture, the fox can also symbolise a being with magical powers, a messenger from the spirit world or the dead. The song can generally be said to be an ongoing inner trial, with memory images having impact as they appear in the dazzling summer light seen from above.
Wild is out on May 22 on Rama Lama Records