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MUSIC

Five Swedish bands to look out for in 2013

With 2012 soon a distant memory, ex-Londoner Paul Connolly puts the spotlight on some acts to look out for on the Swedish music scene in 2013.

Published: 4 January 2013 13:41 CET
Five Swedish bands to look out for in 2013

2012 was a great year for Swedish music.

2013 promises to be better yet, with major artists such as Robyn and Opeth due to release albums and “mid-table” acts such as The Mary Onettes set to produce career-defining work.

But we have our eye on a few up and coming young artists – at least one of these should grab your attention this year.

Enjoy.

Kate Boy

Kate Boy’s incredible Northern Lights was a late highlight of 2012, with its piercing synths slashing like The Knife (see, I told you you’d hear about them again — see link above) through a wondrous tune. Not much else is known about this four-piece other than there is one Aussie in the mix with three Swedes. Their debut album is due in early 2013. I, for one, cannot wait.

Faye

Former girl band star Fanny Hamlin, one quarter of famous-for-fifteen-nanoseconds Play, has reinvented herself as sultry siren, Faye, for a crack at the grown-up market. The word in the UK and US is that this terrific single, Water Against The Rocks, has a real chance of being a breakout hit. Judge for yourselves.

Frida Sundemo

This Gothenburg singer-songwriter has graduated from beautiful acoustic ballads to glacial and heartbreaking electro-pop. Indigo, out early next year, is utterly sensational (Below, I’ve included the single, synth-driven, version, along with an acoustic take to emphasize the strength of the song writing). Sundemo’s even interrupted a medical degree to finish her debut album. Medicine’s loss could be pop’s gain.

Electronic

Acoustic

John Moose

It makes perfect sense that, given the rise of First Aid Kit, there should be other pastoral types roaming the Swedish countryside, hewing timeless chunks of harmony-drenched rustic rock from birch and larch. John Moose are one such bunch and already have one bucolic, shimmering three-song EP under their shaggy beards and will be releasing their debut album in 2013.

Lune

Lune’s leading light Linnea Martinsson had the voice that added the sugar to the sour of Adrian Lux’s 2010 hit Teenage Crime. Her debut “solo” album as Lune is out in late January. The Söråker girl is so convinced of the quality of the tunes on the album that she’s decided not to include Don’t Be Sober, one of the stand-out singles of 2012, and the acoustic version of which is below. Brave or stupid? Time will tell.

Paul Connolly

Read more from Paul here, including his Northern Dispatch column

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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