In one of those weird useful coincidences, this round of Amazing Sweden picks (our contributions to Nordic By Nature and STIM‘s Amazing Sweden playlist etc, you know the drill by now) falls on Midsummer Eve, a special day in the Sweden social calendar where everyone celebrates the middle of the summer with herring, schnapps, maypole dancing and various other weird traditional stuff (although it’s raining right now in Stockholm where I’m writing this, so the weather has not really gotten into the celebratory mood yet). Anyway, if you happen to need some music for your maypole dancing, we’ve got just the thing for you with the three tracks below. Glad midsommar allihopa!
It’s been a while since we heard from TOVE STYRKE, but now she’s hopped on a new version of BIG WILD‘s track Aftergold, which was initially released as an instrumental back in November last year. Adding vocals onto a dance track after the event can often go badly, feeling crow-barred in and awkward, but there’s no danger of that here. Styrke grips the track by its guts with some nimble, slick vocal melodies and lyrics about ca$h money (what else?), imposing herself on the song with such effortless charisma that it’s difficult to imagine what it was like without her.
Photo: Adrian Wigerdal
There’s a circle of songwriters and producers in Stockholm, loosely including the likes of JULIA SPADA, JI NILSSON and SATURDAY, MONDAY, that puts out some of the best electronic pop around. MARLENE is also a member of that crew, and her new single All I Want proves she can match any of them for pop smarts. All I Want is a laid-back, tropically-inflected summer jam that gradually builds into a big, shimmering chorus. It’s packed full of clever production tricks, mixed with a smooth, irresistible rhythm and the subtle power of MARLENE’s vocal to make one hell of a pop song.
Photo: Malin Bernalt
Cherish is a relatively new independent label in Stockholm that focuses on promoting the work of female artists, and one of their headline acts, SWEEEP, recently dropped her debut single BABY SNAKE$. We don’t really know very much about SWEEEP at present, save for the fact that she supported JENNY HVAL last year (and any connection to JENNY HVAL is always a good thing) and she describes her music as ‘the world where field recordings of stones and rain meet digital compositions.’ BABY SNAKE$ is pristine, warped electronica, dubby beats, samples and nervous tension all mixed together into an deep-net meets club tune.
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