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  • Old Friends, New Music: The Long-Awaited Return of Roxette!

    Roxette’s first new studio album in 10 years!
    Although they’ve put out a handful of new songs (generally in conjunction with new “greatest hits” compilations) in the interim, it’s been 10 years since the Roxette released their last studio album, 2001’s Room Service. The Swedish pop duo are best known for a string of epic pop ballads in the late 80s and early 90s including “Listen to Your Heart”, “Fading Like a Flower” and “It Must Have Been Love” from the Pretty Woman soundtrack, not to mention their star-making power-pop classic “The Look”.

    But even as their commercial fortunes waned in the late 90s, they kept making music both together and solo, with Per Gessle releasing five solo albums (including one as Son of a Plumber) and a 2005 reunion album with his pre-Roxette band Gyllene Tider. Marie Fredrikkson also put out several solo albums, mostly in Swedish, but was forced into semi-retirement when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2002. But in the fall of 2009, with a new live band, Gessle and Fredrikkson reunited for a series of smaller-scale shows throughout eastern Europe, and last year they started recording a new album, scheduled to be released internationally this month, called Charm School. Here’s the lead single from the new album: “She’s Got Nothing On (But the Radio)”.

    As is their practice, this first single is an upbeat dance-rocker driven by Gessle’s (weaker) lead vocals, but it’s got glittery 70s-style guitar riffage, a verse that knowingly nods to a 20-year-old Red Hot Chili Peppers song, and a chorus that, over a shimmer of mirror-ball synthesizers, promises to make itself at home in your brain for days. It’s nowhere near the instant pop classic that “The Look” or “Joyride” were, but it’s still proof that Per and Marie can still make a smart, fun, three-minute pop song – and make it look easy. Here’s hoping they’ve got one of their trademark ballads in store for us soon.

  • The Daily Awesome – January 31, 2011: “Blizzard of ’78” by Ida (2001)

    \’\’The Braille Night\’\’, 2001

    A couple weeks ago, friend of SonicClash and Popblerd blogger Mike Heyliger asked folks to name songs about snow that weren’t Christmas songs. Here’s one of my favorites – “Blizzard of ’78” by the indie rock quartet Ida. This 7 minute epic was the centerpiece of the group’s 2001 album The Braille Night. The song is as stormy as its title would suggest, driven forward by an endlessly repeated descending chord progression pounded out on a piano over groaning strings and a noisy snare-and-cymbals rhythmic attack. And as singers Elisabeth Mitchell, Daniel Littleton, and Karla “k.” Schickele sing the song’s chorus – “You’re a thousand miles from here, you just want to disappear” – in beautiful, shifting, increasingly urgent harmonies, you can almost feel yourself trudging down a snow-covered city sidewalk face-first into a punishing, icy wind. In other words, it sounds just like what a blizzard feels like, even if the lyrics seem less about snow and more about someone trying to overcome stage fright. But it’s the evocation that counts, right? And it’s probably one of my Top 10 favorite songs of the last decade. Click the link below to give it a listen for yourself:

    Blizzard of 78

  • First Listen (and Free Download): Fleet Foxes “Helplessness Blues”

    ”Helplessness Blues” by Fleet Foxes
    To preview their sophomore album, Helplessness Blues, due for a May release, indie darlings Fleet Foxes have just posted the record’s title track for free download. It took me a long time to get over my initial skepticism about the band when their first album got so hyped, but it’s hard to deny the lush 70s-style gorgeousness of their country-folk-pop harmonies which come across as equal parts Eagles and Seals & Crofts.

    The first half of this new song sounds like something Simon & Garfunkel might have done for their Bookends album, a personal reflection that feels somehow bigger, almost like a generational reflection: I was raised up believing I was somehow unique like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes… and now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be a functioning cog in some great machine. Then, a little more than halfway through, the song takes a turn. What started as a simple, brisk campfire story song morphs into something slower, more rhythmically complex, more atmospheric. The unadorned two part harmonies of the first half give way to an almost choral sound: “If I had an orchard, I’d work ’til I’m sore.” It’s like a small Great Recession-era John Steinbeck novel in song. I can’t wait for the album.

    Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues by subpop