SARALUNDEN,
BJÖRKAS, MJÖS - dubious
(CD,
nexsound)
The new branch of the nexsound imperium NSPQP stands
for nexsound-popmusic. I does not say so anywhere, but I am sure. Actually,
it says that it stands for “pickup”, but I don’t know what that means
and my version makes more sense anyway. Because the first two releases on
this new segment of the label (this one here and the duo collaboration of
Saralunden with label co-leader Andrey Kiritchenko) are definite steps away from
the exciting noise-avantgarde / free improvisation / electroacoustic stuff
you were used to. This 5-song EP starts with harmonious, almost jazzy
singing over acoustic guitar and has just what I said before: songs. With
chorus, structure and melodies. Nexsound itself calls it “more
accessible” and I think they do not mean in terms of distribution, but in
listening. And those are also worth listening to. And to listen to deeply,
with concentration and mind open, just like you were used to before.
This threesome collaboration has Saralunden and Kyrree
Björkas as singers and songwriters and Andreas Mjös adding production and
electronics. Now, before you form an opinion, forget all you know about
electronic songwriter music, all of the Roisin Murphy-danceshit and also all
of the Beth Gibbons-patheticness, and most of all all of the polished to
death Kosheen-overproduction. Think of the most intimate experience you had
in the last three months (or three years, whatever suits your lifestyle) and
then try to remember how those long, late night conversations went, when the
music had faded out, the bottle was almost empty and you knew that even the
days and weeks ahead could not and would not destroy the memory of the
feeling you had. This memory of that feeling is what makes up the main
mystery of these songs.
Maybe the fact that Björkas and Saralunden were at one
time a love couple that was seperated by the distances that part Stockholm
and Oslo plays an important role in the melancholy and nostalgia seeping
through these songs and low, sad melodies. To me it feels as if you can hear
the cold wind of the Scandinavian plains sweeping through the songs. Björkas
sings in a smoky bass while Saralunden completes him with a mysterious
higher voice that is soft and strong at the same time. Each of the five
songs seems to have its own inner enigma to be solved. Only the last on,
“Murder”, falls out of the structure. While the first four songs have
them singing every line together over various kinds of percussionless music,
the last one not only peruses a distinctive drumbeat but also has them
duetting properly, with a kind of call-response scheme. Like a postmodern
Lee & Nancy electronica murder ballad.
There is always a certain strange and dark sense field
lurking underneath the songs. That is a give away right from the beginning,
when the easy listening “doobie-doobie” turns not into Sinatra’s
“doobie-doobie-doo” but into “dubious. It is the kind of atmosphere
that made David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” so fascinating and irrestistible
in the first few shows. The songs themselves also dib into these kinds of
personal obsessions. “I lie naked in my bet / imagine you are there”
only to go on stating that “I couldn’t help myself / when I first saw
you / I had this instant urge to make you mine” (from “Naked in my
bed”) – to hear words such as these from a female / male voice
combination in this tonality gives the whole song a fascinating twist. And
the other songs all hide one or two of these moments of epiphany or dark
enigma in them.
A definite favorite for 2007.
