The Singles Jukebox

Swedish music not sung by an attractive blonde girl may also be a slightly hard sell at times.

[Video][Website]
[5.67]

Edward Okulicz: I love Kent. They might be my favourite rock band in the world and I admit they’re part of the reason I became interested in learning Swedish (“Kärleken Väntar” is the first song I ever learned to sing in a language I didn’t speak at all, back in 2002). I’m glad that my understanding of the words is still at the weird stage where I have to listen closely to process them because I think they may not be very good. In any event, despite the angry, unlinked shopping-list nature of the words, the song sounds like more of a bitter seething than an incendiary declaration, though it’s really only a remix featuring some marching drums away from that. In any case, it builds quite hypnotically, so I forgive its rather un-Kent lack of a strong melody, if only because its seething matches my own mood. 
[8]

David Sheffieck: Based on the translations I found, this is a political song in the scattershot way “rebellious” teenagers are political people, with a viewpoint that equates and condemns fascism and child pornography alongside Melodifestivalen and bad weather. The laundry-list nature of the lyric allows for no sense of proportion, no differentiation between bombings and Big Macs; the lack of a solid hook makes it impossible to ignore the idiocy of that approach.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: I fell in love with this before I knew the lyrics, which based on what I can tell (and “what I can tell,” since it is 2014, is mediated by R*p G*n**s; the process of using R*p G*n**s for a swell-rock song in Swedish that none of the geniuses know what to do with is accidentally hilarious) seem to roughly be “something is rotten in the state of Sweden.” What that “something” is seems to be, well, everything: roofies to reading the comments, bombing and tear gas to Melodifestivalen, xenophobia and Big Macs — so basically it’s even broader and sillier than Savage Garden’s “Affirmation,” and you can nod selectively then ignore the rest to let the chamber-pop glacier sweep by. An element most protest songs forget.
[7]

Iain Mew: The intro suggests they’re doing an indie strings recreation of Dvbbs & Borgeous, which I would love to hear. That disappears as soon as the refined (in both sense) vocals come in and it settles into being a lush blanket. It’s something that I like and that they do well, though having spent the weekend unpacking my CD collection after a move I can confirm the large number of other bands who could match it.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Is that a shoutout to Melodifestivalen I hear? The sandy timbre of the close harmonies is rubbing me wrong; the deliberate vocal pacing is OK. A little like Sigur Rós at double speed. The chorus nearly breaks into the clouds, but as a whole, the track’s better slashing than soaring.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Garrulous Swedish electronic pop, closer to Keane than expected. That’s an awful lot of adjectives and allusions to live down.
[4]