Oh wow. What can I say. I mean, the hardest thing about getting back to business like this is probably to just take the step. More specifically, the hardest thing is to choose what song to come rushing back in with. It’s like, just a week after my last post back in July I knew I wanted to get back to regularly posting and writing about some good shit ass bitch music but it’s taken me like three months to just pick the right track. And now I have, so here we are. Before we get to that, though, let me just tell me what I’ve been up to this summer. There’s been hanging out with friends and attending gigs and clubs and whatnot. But most of all I’ve been working like a mad man the entire summer. Like graveshift slavin’ y’all. And I’m so thankful for having had the chance to work at a lovely place with lovely comrades during times where it can be quite hard to find work for a young person without a final education. It did get me lots of money in the pocket which helped pay for quite a few festivals and other stuff and I’ve still got some left.

First of all it was Emmaboda, which is Sweden’s sleaziest festival, which stands in contrast to the quite hip audience attending it. It’s quite small, around 9000 visitors every year but they book really good acts and the atmosphere is just fantastic. The audience is quite young, the typical Emmaboda visitor is 16-20 years old and more often than not sports an indie style of clothes. The festival has a sort of sweet but still rough around the edges indie pop vibe to it, in a typical Swedish manner. But over the years it has grown to be a festival for all electro fans, while still managing to offer something everyone can enjoy. I experienced THE most danceable 1,5 hour gig ever by super-un-hip Infected Mushroom (!), a hit-parade by popsters Two Door Cinema Club, the catchy circus of Yelle, the alcohol-induced blackout of emo-gone-screamostep champion Skrillex, the danger of Danger, the non-nude antics of bit-ravers Slagsmålsklubben, yet another fantastic gig by Sweden’s best pop group Hästpojken, the sultry stylings of Slumberland band Crystal Stilts, the fine, grand opening of the festival by First Aid Kit, the psychic chasms of synth-wiz Neon Indian, the sweet memory of jj with my arms around someone I cared a lot for at the time, the professional stardom of mainstream-gone-semi-indie Daniel Adams-Ray, the bubbly and evocative spellbinding of Niki & The Dove, the beautiful ramshackle of Vivian Girls, the undeniable charm of Lilla Lovis and her two mesmerizing dancers, the audience’s positively-surprised moment of the rocking-out drums-and-organ duo by the name of Trummor & Orgel and the boring but still somewhat enchanting pop by Syket. Plus loads of alcohol since I’m finally twenty and can buy my own alchohol at Systembolaget. Second time around and hopefully there’ll be a third visit next year at Sweden’s only ”real” festival left.

Then there was Way Out West, the clean and sophisticated Gothenburg city-based non-camping festival with extremely Pitchfork-approved line-ups each year but with an inferiority complex to our Norwegian neighbours’ twice as big Øya festival in Oslo. WOW sports around 35 000 visitors and Øya around 80 000 visitors. During too many acts me and my friends were simply drinking beer in the sunny grass outside the festival’s entrance but I still got to experience Destroyer’s fantastic club gig, Empire Of The Sun’s awe-inspiring, extraterrestrial, heavily visual and music-videolike landing on earth, the ragged folk outbursts of the beards in Fleet Foxes, an, as ever, explosive, unashamedly cocky, if not 100% attention-grabbing live perfomance of the ever handsome men in suits in The Hives, the lovely and charming Janelle Monáe, the ego so big that no visitors would’ve been needed for the festival feel crowded of living legend Kanye West, fantastic pre-hearing of Jonathan Johansson’s new, as of then unreleased album in a church, making it a religious experience of a Jonathan Johansson fan as me, a quite good gig by Okkervil River sharing the club bill with Destroyer, the tired 90′s revival of alread tired back then Pulp, the never ceasing brilliant showmanship, but oh so familiar by now, recent catalogue of Robyn and a much better setting and soundscape for Syket playing before Jonathan Johansson in the same church that very same magic night. The festival keeps on rolling strong with the best lineup any Swedish festival has ever had – that’s four year’s in a row now!

Then there was Green Man Festival in the beautiful Brecon Beacons in Wales. It’s a child-friendly festival and the temporary alcoholism most camping festivals (especially Swedish ones) feature is kept to a relieving and harmonious minimum. A festival devoted mostly to indie folk I experienced the mild and wonderful rush of Wild Nothing NOT playing Chinatown (perhaps he thought he was in competition with Destroyer for the right to that song title), an ear-opening gig by the very talented Conor J. O’Brien a.k.a. Villagers, a most peculiar live-in-front-of-audience Mojo magazine interview and, for that matter, live performance by Josh T. Pearson, an against-all-odds fantastic and jaw-dropping mid-day sunny performance by James Blake, an admirable gig by The Avett Brothers, another amazing performance by Destroyer which makes me want to run my fingers through my hair, kneel down and take a sip from my glass of whiskey, my second time seeing the loveable homecoming Welsh hero Gruff Rhys, the gig of course ending with the theatrical and groovy Skylon, a hypnotizingly calm and hard but ever so emotionally soft inside performance by the angelic Laura Marling, an intimate and instantly likeable for any indie folk aficionado gig by The Low Anthem, the sleep-inducing drama of Explosions In The Sky (ok, maybe it was the alcohol… TOO!) and yet another tremendous gig, an hour and a half catalogue run-through of Fleet Foxes’ discography. I fell in love with the festival and the Welsh language, culture, people, nature and scenery and I hope to get the chance to come again some year in a not too distant future.

Then there was Popaganda in Stockholm and, just like at the Way Out West festival, me and my friends probably spent too much time, if yet wonderful time indeed, in the grass in the sun just outside the festival entrance. During the Friday, however, I discovered that Saint Etienne were definitely off-piste on a bit too large stage in too sunny a weather for their 90′s throwback nightclub-friendly eurodisco pop to feel relevant, that I after all prefer Cults on record, that the pompuous yet comfy pop of Serenades benefitted from a sunset and that Arcade Fire is every little bit of an astonishing act to catch live as any friend or friend’s friend or friend’s friend’s friend has ever told you. The Saturday offered a Delorean which against all odds managed to conjure a feeling of Spanish beach rave parties at a mid-temperatured late Swedish summer festival, jj continuing to spread magic and unpredictability and reminisces of love lost and Lykke Li in all her blossomed out dark glory.

Overall it was a fantastic summer. Right now I’m in my second semester studying Spanish at the University of Stockholm and at the side of that I will blog here on a daily basis, covering the best songs, my favourite songs, and the concerts, small and big, that I attend. But for now I leave you with the song that it took me three months to choose. It sums up nights slipping away, without love, without blogging and only the music to accompany you. And perhaps how I wanted myself to come back to writing. Most of all it sums up how we all miss Hill.

Listen to Ms. Hill on Spotify!

Or watch the youtube video below.