noisedfisk

Irene

2006.03.29

— Music

When December comes, I always find it difficult to make a list of my “top 10 albums of the year”. That’s why I decided, this year, to prepare myself well in advance… See how serious I am…
There are a couple or records I’m listening to quite regularly at the moment, almost on a daily basis. The first is Introducing… by Hello Saferide but you know that already. The second has just been released, In Colour by The Concretes, it sounds quite nice even though I’m not sure it’s better than their debut. The third is highly expected, it’s the new Radio Dept. album, Pet Grief. It will be released on April 12th and can be pre-ordered from the Labrador website.

But after listening to four tracks of Irene, I’m pretty sure that their second EP, supposed to hit the world in May, will be one of my favourites. Again, they come from Göteborg (I wonder what’s going on in this Swedish city at the moment, with so many great bands: “Man, what the hell is it with Gothenburg?” as Alistair Fitchett wrote recently), again they are signed on Labrador. I won’t describe the band nor their music, since they do it so well on their myspace page: Irene grew into a full scale band quite spontaneously in 2005. The members are all friends from the local pub in Göteborg, Sweden. Some songs that Tobias Isaksson (aka Bobby) had written just couldn’t wait to be performed live. The dudes that did the first show had so much fun that they wanted to stick around. By the autumn of 2005 Irene was an octet with semi-permanent members. Shortly after that the record label Labrador signed the band. Irene likes to record as much as possible live, in one take, up to six people letting it out in one room. Only the final touch (vocals, trumpets and handclaps etc) is added afterwards. The result is a vivid sound marked by the 60’s, Motown soul, girl-groups, American west coast- and contemporary pop. The members of Irene are beach-crooners, punks and next-door nice-guys. All in one. Their music sounds like A) Hot summer days on the beach with timeless pop music floating through the sound of laughing seagulls and colliding waves. B) Semi-talented clowns messing up the perfect night out with the noise of broken instruments and out-of-pitch vocals… Their music is just perfect, you know, “like a teddy bear on heroine”… That’s exactly what my ipod needs when I have to go to work early in the rainy morning and every time I feel like escaping from this grey world to enjoy summer beaches… Awesome!

Picture: Henrik Dahlberg

• Comments