It’s easy to see why Zorbing was Stornoway’s breakthrough song. Starting off simply with lead singer Brian Briggs a melody that is just catchy enough to tease you into singing along as the folky tune about ”lying in your attic, I can feel the static” is sung in a sort of schoolboy choir tenor. So far so good, but the song doesn’t take off until after the second chorus when they whip up a most surprising and wonderful rendezvouz between stirring drums and trumpets. It whips up the spirit of the listener and while so far you could feel the static of the song the next verse brings the emotional release where one can really picture the exuberance of a new love as zorbing together. These lines are the core of the song and paired with the semi-pastoral melody becomes an emotional tidal wave of positive vibes. Thrilling. I suppose this is the closest you can come to the feeling of zorbing without actually zorbing.
I’ve been singing you this song
Inside a bubble
Been zorbing through the streets of Cali
We were always meant to be
Zorbing together, and I think its high time we started
Or watch the music video, which for some inscrutable reason features absolutely no zorbing through no British hillside landscape whatsoever, below. Waste of marketing opportunity, for both the zorbing experience companies and Stornoway.
While twee to a fault, This Heart Is A Stone shows that the cutest extremes of indie pop can still be full of wit that adds a whole other, utterly charming dimension to an already catchy tune.
We add this song to our iPod playlists for the ever so sweet melody but we stay for smartly naïve and contrasting lines like:
They say your middle name is trouble
But I know it’s Caroline
They say they can smell the drama.
But I know it’s No. 5.
They say you only bring heartache
But I know you brought a bottle of wine.
I was lucky enough to see jj live two times this summer, at the Swedish festivals Emmaboda and at Popaganda. I was a bit drunk at both occasions but vaguely remember that at least at Emmaboda Elin Kastlander started singing what appeared to be an interlude, one that really hooked me and reeled me in. It was something that triggered my memory but whatever it was, it was out of reach. That melody and those words, something along the line of ”na na na na na… and it goes round and round…”, struck a chord inside of me. It was really a magical moment.
It took me until now to get searching to find it out. My only clue was that I had this feeling that it was from some cheesy 90′s dance-pop hit and that it wasn’t from a jj song because then I’d know. Sincerely Yours raised an eyebrow and told me that ”dude, that’s My Life, by jj. But glad you enjoyed it.”. I felt stupid because, indeed, the last 20 seconds or so of this bleak piano ballad features the words ”Na na na na na / It goes around the world…”. Then it didn’t take me long to realize that this is deft theft. Indeed, jj have ingeniously lifted a fantasy-trigging part from old cheesy Germany-based 90′s eurodancepop act ATC’s addicting 2000 hit Around The World (La La La La La), and perfectly fused it into their own melodic soundscape. While lasting for only 20 seconds in a song that actually is a The Game cover, this homage to this universally hypnotizing melody alone still makes My Life stand alongside Ecstacy and the Kills mixtape as jj’s finest pop cultural redigesting.
Listen to Around The World (La La La La La) on Spotify!
Watch the gorgeous music video for Around The World (La La La La La) below!
For pop musicologists #1: ATC’s version is actually a cover of a 1998 europop song called Pesenka by Russian group Ruki Vverh!. It sounds a little more charmingly 90′s simple and a little more classic techno/house while the Russian lyrics that Google Translate simply refuses to translate gives it a further dimension of mystery. Listen to it in the youtube video below.
For pop musicologists #2: German ”new wave of bubblegum pop” or ”old farty traditionalist cultural leftover phenomenon wave” group beFour decided to update it to a electrohouse-y version in 2007 and aptly titled it Magic Melody. You know. For those of you wanting a bit more of that contemporary ooomph. Watch the cute music video below.
For pop musicologists #3: Kids of the 90′s like myself will surely remember ATC’s other hit, My Heart Beats Like A Drum, with a glittering joy of nostalgia across their face, tears in the eyes and all. But it’s catchy and fun as hell. Just like Around The World it sports an almost identical fake xylophone hook, a chilly, austere production, and that almost otherworldy ethereal melodic atmosphere. The chorus, however is melodically sweeter and warmer, making it the go-to ATC song for dancing and singing along. Watch the lovely music video below.
For some unbelievable reason My Heart Beats Like A Drum does not exist on Spotify. My eye cry.
For pop musicologists #4: Yes. Another 90′s profile, my hero, ATB, did sue them for their name. They changed it to A Touch Of Class. Judging by the songs we’ve just examined here I could’nt have named them better. No irony, I really am into the 90′s sound you know!
For pop musicologists #5: Fredrik Strage, probably Sweden’s best writer on pop culture, noted that airline company Air France played jj’s My Life during the landing of his flight last year at Charles de Gaulle, and guessed that it was either a subtle protest from the cabin crew against strenuous working hours (note the lyrics ”I’m grinding til I’m tired, they say you ain’t grindin’ til you tired”) or as a way to compensate that fellow Gothenburg-based Sincerely Yours band Air France have stolen the airline company’s name.
For pop musicologists #6: The Battlefield 3 trailer is really elegant and evocative.
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.
Almost a week ago I celebrated the 4th of July by putting this stunning track on repeat all day. To me, Kelis has always been an underrated performer and one of the coolest ladies in the modern r&b and pop industries. I was actually pumped about seeing her transform into a club-friendly dance-diva on Flesh Tone. I was all fired up about the tantalizing lead single Acapella and she got my respect for keeping up with the times and selling a tribute to her son, dressed up as minimal technopop, to the club kids. But it was 4th Of July (Fireworks) that really blew me away and worked the magic. I’m still bummed about missing her gig in Sweden last fall. It would’ve been interesting to experience how she would manage to mix her old r&b hits with her new straightly electronic flair in a live setting.
Acapella was produced by David Guetta and that you could easily tell by the hypnotizingly austere sound of the synth buzzes and production in general. It was one of Guetta’s best productions to date. 4th Of July (Fireworks) sounds, if possible, even more like a Guetta production albeit being produced by DJ Ammo who probably have taken some inspirational cues from the titanic producer and DJ. The piano hint at the drama Kelis presents in her singing but are twisted in the production to sound pervertedly synthetic in a true Guetta manner. In reality, however, those are samples from Pilotpriest’s remix of the Lioness song You’re My Heart which you can listen to here. Still, the melody is prettier than the prettiest girl you can find in any club and gives Kelis room to show off the wide range of her voice as she half-whispers a verse where she emotes like a resurrected phoenix rising from the ashes yet still lovesick and longing.
Didn’t think I needed you
Never seemed to
But I’m living proof
And now I’m brand new
Rename me
Baby, claim me
I’ve been changed see
You make me hold up
You make me hold up
Didn’t think I needed you
Never seemed to
But I’m living proof
These are fitting lyrics for Kelis’ recontextualization into the dancefloor but so far the electrohouse beat so far has only hinted that the chorus will give us so much more to dance over. The bridge, however, will offer one of the best build-ups ever heard where Kelis is forcefully and desperately exclaiming her affection to a stark but nonetheless powerful effect. I’m amazed these words haven’t become the club anthem scream-along they were destined to be.
Nothing
I’ll ever say or do
Will be as good
As loving you
The emotion is then pushed to its maximum with Kelis establishing the fact ”You make me high” sounding like she’s gonna swoon with what sounds like Timbaland doing a mini-guest appearance with ”And I don’t wanna come down” as the songs builds up to the explosion where the first verse is recited again. With the listener by this time being familiar with the words they become all the more powerful with DJ Ammo’s masterful handling of the buzzing synths in the beat. Up to this point the song has been such an emotional and danceable blast repeating stark and strong mantras it just feels superfluous to throw in yet another theme and picture, here the theme of a fireworks sky on the 4th of July. But as long as it’s Kelis singing those words over that delicious beat I’m just glad it’s this track that soundtracks my 4th of July each year. And yes, I’m glad this didn’t become a bigger hit than it deserves because it allows me to never grow tired of it.
The video is pretty and we do love seeing one of the coolest mainstream r&b-pop stars in cool outfits even if it’s quite similar to the Acapella video. Unfortunately it features none of the energy that pulses through 4th Of July (Fireworks) due to the slow editing and lack of powerful imagery to match the song’s emotional baggage. And the video edit is inferior to the album version. So I’ll post both the video and a youtube upload of the album version below.
