The Singles Jukebox

Swedish reggae: oh, it’s out there…

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[4.09]

Michaelangelo Matos: Gruff-voiced Swedish singer-songwriter crosses first-album Lily Allen arrangement with last-album Sublime vocal, cashes check.
[3]

Martin Skidmore: If you’ve ever wanted to hear a husky-voiced Swedish guy singing flatly over Police-lite reggaeish backing, you’re in luck. You could just dilute the Clash’s reggae tracks by about 10:1, of course. Terrible.
[1]

Spencer Ackerman: Like if Joe Strummer started his career in the late 1980s as a special-needs child. And I hate you for making me think of such a thing.
[1]

Tom Ewing: Given how routinely The Clash are lionised as an all-time-great band, it’s remarkable how rarely people try and sing like Joe Strummer. It’s almost as if his righteous braying didn’t actually sound very good — but no, that can’t be so. Anyhow, good work Moneybrother for keeping the flame lit, and for busting out some all-too-authentic sounding rough-fringed 80s protest-pop. A successful career in Redskins tribute bands awaits, my lucky friend!
[6]

Martin Kavka: Reggae-lite is one of those genres of pop which to me need at least two of the following elements to be enjoyable: a lazy afternoon, alcohol, overpriced tie-dye fashion, a field or beach filled with the kind of bad dancing perfected by carefree twenty-year-olds. Given Anders Wendin’s English accent — an acquired taste unless you think that Bob Dylan sounds like Maria Callas — “We Die Only Once” needs all four.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: Despite many disgressions against good taste, I’ve always enjoyed Moneybrother, but there’s no way you can justify this kind of airheaded ska-or-is-it-cod-reggae-I-don’t-care pastiche as being anything other than indulgent. Anders Wendin’s voice does interesting, impassioned things in rock but strains badly when shooting for soulful conviction. This isn’t soulful, it’s just tasteful.
[5]

Ian Mathers: True, it’s not nearly as exciting as their frenzied, stringtastic single “They’re Building Walls Around Us“, but if you can get over that this song has a wonderfully reclined, resigned take on mortality that’s covertly one of the few tolerable anti-suicide songs out there. And while the verses may be a bit too cod-reggae for some people, its got a lovely chorus – just more subtle than its predecessor.
[7]

Erick Bieritz: Blokey deliveries and reggae vamping are nothing new, but oh, oh, it’s sweet to hear the world-weary pathos of that arch titular phrase, filtering through such deceptively sunny music (the Super Furry Animals’ “It’s Not the End of the World?” comes to mind).
[6]

Hillary Brown: I was pretty lukewarm on this to start out, but there’s something sweet at its core that’s slowly converted me to its side. It’s got a kind of early Billy Bragg vibe, but with the instrumentation of someone much more expansive.
[7]

Pete Baran: Perhaps we die only once, and for what I assume will be a period of time no less than the eventual twinkling out of the universe. However, that period (let’s call it an eternity) will feel a hell of a lot longer with songs like this around.
[1]

Alfred Soto: A Joe Strummer wannabe singing over a slight skank is one thing; the same guy ignoring synth blasts and horns out of a Blow Monkeys record is daft enough in 2009 to get’em noticed. I wish they’d done more with the Mekons-worthy title, though, other than pretend it’s a backdrop for tricky riddims.
[5]