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Listening to some Love is All from the batch of downloads I leave on the work machine, after moving past lead singer Josephine Olaussen's obvious debt to the singers for Altered Images, Life Without Buildings, and Pylon, I recognized that Swedes have always been good at this complex dance pop, and that Love is All, seemingly out of nowhere, is not out of nowhere, but squarely in context. Because Ray Wonder did this ten years ago, sadly before bloggers would have shot them to the moon of popularity.
Ray Wonder somewhat spring from a member sprung from labelmates Komeda in the early nineties. A singles-collection album and some EPs gain them some word of mouth momentum for their XTC-meets-Matthew Sweet uberpop; but despite amazing skillz, they never get the cult status inexplicably gained by countrypeople Soundtrack of our Lives, and dissolve by 2000. Their wonderfully complete website says:
Henrik is currently playing with his new band, hank, Ludwig and Toft is recording the first album with their joint project BÖSS, new single out this spring/summer. Per is working as head executive at MNW Records Group (he also plays with some band with an unknown name).
I saw them at Brownies (RIP) in 1997 or so; fantastic show. I think Mr. Tapeworm missed this show due to a tapeworm flareup after he arrived. Mr. Tapeworm? Was it this show or Les Savy Fav that year?
PS Music for Robots has a well-executed dance remix of the Futureheads' "Skip to the End," although I'm still deciding whether it should be ridiculed for under-utilizing the original's monstrous guitar riff.
PPS (DVD update) Saw Syriana this weekend. Like John Sayles going global. You know a script as complex as this was kept a secret from the studio that greenlighted it. Otherwise it doesn't get made. Riveting, too, if only to stay with it, but the ham-handed metaphors, employed via some characters' personal lives (family death, alcoholic enabler), to match larger themes, felt forced and useless.
PPPS (TV update) I'm into HBO's Lucky Louie, and not just cause Louis CK's wife wears an MC5 t-shirt, or because Jim Norton and Jerry Minor make me laugh when they simply stand there, or not just because there's man-nudity, or because CK's wife catches him masturbating in the closet to a pic of Jessica Simpson, by which CK defends himself by saying "it's not like I was jacking off to her music." No. It's really because I can't get the theme music out of my head. Not usually a fan or harmonica, but this does the job.
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