NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION‘s new additions to the Amazing Sweden playlist, in association with Nordic By Nature and STIM, come out precisely every four weeks. It has been four weeks since the last set of songs we added to the playlist. Therefore, and the junior Sherlocks among you may have sped way ahead of me and already realised this, it’s time for another new batch of Swede goodness in the form of three of our favourite songs from the past month. Check them out below.
For any of you that might have slept on this, now you get another chance to do the right thing and get yourselves acquainted with JOSEFIN ÖHRN + THE LIBERATION. Her/ their debut album Horse Dance was one of our favourite records of 2015, eight tracks of raw, rough psychedelia that blew the cobwebs that crusties have left over the genre clean off. Now she’s released another single from that record, Sunny Afternoon, and it comes with a brand new track on the b-side, Lucid Sapphire. It follows the template established on the record, of driving guitar groove paired with little whirlpools of fuzz and haze and ÖHRN‘s airy vocals, pretty closely, and that’s no bad thing, because we can’t get enough of this right now.
If Nu Rave, and the general electro-pop trend that grew from it, was ever really a musical era, there are a few bands whose critical reputations survived better than others, for example LATE OF THE PIER, IS TROPICAL AND EGYPTIAN HIP HOP. For some reason, DISCOPUNK‘s new single Fire reminds me of the work of these bands. It’s got the same level of irrepressible catchiness, the same dangerously high levels of digital-disco dancability. It’s the kind of song that seems destined to become a night out classic, the kind of song that singing along to will be the central (and possibly only) memory of some of the messiest and greatest nights of your life.
Shockingly, POKAL aka Arne Barlindhaug Ellingsen is actually Norwegian and not Swedish, but he has lived in Stockholm for a while now so we feel that he more than qualifies for inclusion here. And plus, with a track as good as Know Your Name, we’re more than happy to play a little loose with the rules. Know Your Name is a graceful dream-trip, Ellingsen’s wistful vocal (‘I don’t know your name, but if I did I’d call it out loud’) paired with a lush, airy pysch soundscape that even stretches to include a little dab of flute. It’s absurdly pretty, and perfect for chilling out and daydreaming, for probably too long, about someone on your mind.
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