This one also dates back a bit. Sweden’s Yesterday Girl label has, as the volume number in the title implies, been doing a series of these built around little scenes.
The previous volumes were Minnesota, Illinois and California. For this one about their home territory they’ve hooked up with the US Zip office, who have had their own thing for Sweden (beyond Art’s string of imported assistants), making it easier to find around our home territories.
In our world Sweden is better known for their contribution to the original, ‘80s International Garage Revival (see Backdoor Men, Cornflake Zoo, Nomads, Stomachmouths, etc.) and its end of the millennium echo, plus the intervening period’s fascination with Brit-Pop (see the catalogues of the Soap & A West Side Fabrication labels).
But straighter Pop-Rock was more a tangential subject. Even here Zip stalwarts Dorian Gray, with Beginners, continues their devotion to the elongated phrasing and stilted rhythms of latter day Brit-Pop. Torpedo’s the Spyders adds a very cool horn section to their slightly less inflected version.
But then you have oldsters (dating back to late ‘80s) the Mop Tops, who, as their name defines, goes back to an earlier time. You Crucify Me has a slight Western lilt built of a Buddy Hollyesque rhythm, a jangling array of guitars — acoustic, six and twelve string electrics all piled on — and delicately layered, sweet as candy harmonies. In another age it would have been considered chart fodder for the masses, instead you and the five thousand other denizens of dark, dank places like the Audities listserve are the only ones basking in the lovely glow.
Safari Season built Growing Young on overt allusions to the Beach Boys’ Heroes & Villains. With those chiming keyboards & guitars, and massively cascading harmonies it is a brilliant act of prestidigitation. The Ballerinas intro Oh Yes You Hate Us with thirty seconds in the guise of an early ‘80s Synth-Pop ditty before bringing in the acoustic guitars, drums et al. as they swing into the second half of the first verse towards the chorus built in the guise of an old school yard chant. The synths, song length and yelps take it to the edge of losing its charm, but they barely hold on.
And in a throwback to those previously mentioned Garage days, the Giljoteens offer a driving, moody, Vox organ-powered slice of mid-tempo Rock in Time To Go. Somewhere between the early Stems (to bring in another locale that participated in the G.G-R.R.) and their southern predecessors the Sinners, circa their cover of Open Up Your Door, is where to file ‘em.
This collection is the prefect antidote to remedy the soon coming, sweltering summer miseries, when the just past winter ones once more become dim memories.
[Released by Yesterday Girl/Zip 2003]
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