Swedish Shoes ‘Sleep And Eat’

What’s red and lies in the gutter? A dead bus. Or in our case, two or three, because see, they all appeared at once when we decided we were open for business again yesterday and all died of shock when we served up our second post in as many days. It won’t last.

While I was rummaging yesterday, I came across Swedish Shoes on the previously mentioned swedesplease.net. This much I know – they’re called Ola Angleby and Joakim Näslund, who may or may not look like the above picture. And that’s it. I’m not even sure if they’re just called Shoes, adding the Swedish bit to differentiate themselves from all those bands called Shoes in other parts of the world.

What I know for certain is they sound – to quote my old pal – literally quite good. Cleverer people than me have already said there’s a hint of Antony off of the Johnsons, which you’d have to agree with. Not sure where their Depeche Mode comparison comes from though. No entirely sure it’s necessary for the end of the song to descend into its odd folk wigout, but hey, who am I to complain when there’s handclaps too. Who’s anyone to complain when there’s handclaps? Enormously likable stuff.

More hear…
- Erm, there’s just the MySpace, which is here

hjaltalín ‘Traffic Music’

Gosh, is that the month already? The sharper knives among you will have noticed we completely dropped out back there, and for some considerable time too. So long in fact we missed Xmas, New Year, the entire month of January and, indeed, most of February.

If this was a proper job and not our own do what we like, when we like sort of place we’d have been sacked some time ago. Thankfully, it is our very own do what we like place. Ha.

Easing ourselves back in like you’d ease yourself into a very cold swimming pool, we were stumbling around with our cloth ears flapping madly when we discovered The Music Alliance Pact.

Essentially a collection of MP3 blogs from around the world, serving up a track a month, we found MAP on the rather nice swedesplease.net and spent a happy evening listening to stuff from Brazil and Argentina, Canada, Chile, New Zealand… February’s selection features tracks from 22 countries, the pick of the bunch, hands down, is Iceland’s magnificent hjaltalín.

We’re not sure how many of them there actually are, but we’ve studied pictures and have counted between seven and nine. A mini orchestra then, they come fully loaded with violins, cellos, bassoons, clarinets, accordions, trumpets, trombones, french horns, singing, the lot. They remind us of the very finest moments of Mr Jake Shillingford’s My Life Story polished with a hankie from the very top draw of (inevitably) The Arcade Fire. There’s probably some Paul Heaton in there too for good measure. Some say it’s a bit Mercury Rev, which you suppose it might be.

hjaltalín are hardly a secret we know, but give us a chance. We’re easing in slowly. They are uh-mazing. Louise, you will love them, but Simon won’t.

More fine new music soon. No, really.

More hear…
- This year we will be mostly bigging up last.fm. Hear more hjaltalín here
- We will also be continuing to point out that every band in the world has a MS
- And it would be deeply amiss of us not to point out you can actually still BUY music. Their very fine debut album, ‘Sleepdruk Sessions’ is here for less than a tenner.