Casablanca - Downtown

"We've got one chance left to turn it all around"

Imagine my delight when discovering that two fifths of this new Swedish supergroup are Erik Stenemo (from Melody Club) and Josephine Forsman (from Sahara Hotnights). That alone caught my attention and guaranteed that I was going to sit up and take Casablanca seriously. The band hearkens back to the over-the-top hair metal of the 80's and is very authentic in that. They really go for the lighters-in-the-air anthem template with Downtown, a song that sounds a little like The Ark in parts--the dramatic, slowed down chorus, especially. Frontman Anders Ljung is no Ola Salo, but his throaty, at times sleazy, vocals fit the KISS-style aesthetic perfectly. This genre trends toward self-parody almost instinctively, but something about this band (and Swedish music in general), manages to harness the genre's tropes and turn something that could be cheesy into something quite rousing. And with support from Swedish radio (this song debuted on the annual P3 Guld awards), they could turn out to be what we thought H.E.A.T. was last year.

Casablanca - Downtown by alienhits

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