A Standing Ovation For Scandinavia

After a year or so on the sidelines, Scandinavia and Northern Europe is back when it comes to fantastic pop music. Honestly, in the past few months, I've seen more great music come out of the region than in all of last year. It's really an amazing resurgence, and kind of reminds me of when I first got into Scandinavian music a decade ago.

I just wanted to give some of these fantastic songs another look today, because each and every one of them is totally special. Not only that, but most are from artists I'd never featured on the blog before, giving me a lot of hope for the future of European pop music. And the best part is, it's only March! I can't wait to see what's still waiting for us.

Nicole Sabouné - Conquer Or Suffer (Sweden)
Isac Elliot - New Way Home (Finland)
Ace Wilder - Do It (Sweden)
Ulrik Munther - Tell The World I'm Here (Sweden)
Darin - En Apa Som Liknar Dig (Sweden)
Blitzkids Mvt. - Heart On The Line (Germany)
Le Kid - We Are Young (Sweden)
Anton Ewald - Begging (Sweden)
The Royal Concept - World On Fire (Sweden)
Ben Ivory - The Righteous Ones (Germany)
Margaret Berger - I Feed You My Love (Norway)
Studio Killers - All Men Are Pigs (Denmark)
Krista Siegfrids - Marry Me (Finland)
Martin Rolinski - In And Out Of Love (Sweden)

Buying Music in Stockholm

No direct music post today, but I'm in what I consider to be the pop music capital of the world right now, so I thought that that deserved its own post. If you have even a passing interest in Swedish music (or Sweden in general), you've gotta find a way to get over here. Each time I arrive in Stockholm the city takes my breath away. I'm convinced that there's no more beautiful city on Earth. This is my fifth time (!) and there's a reason I keep coming back, even though the weather looks nothing like the above picture right now. It's freezing and very gray. But I've been in the Summer and there's nothing better.

Being that this is a music blog, I'll give you a how-to to buying music in Stockholm. I could spend days in all the little used record stores around town and spend WAY too much kronor. Like London, and pretty much every city in the world, a lot of the chain record stores seem to have closed down. There's still the famous Bengans on the way to Sergels Torg, and you can also find a small selection of new cds in the chain department store Åhléns, though prices for new albums are almost always expensive (between 149 and 199 kronor - that's about 21-28$). It's fun too look, but there are much better deals to be had.

The best spot to find affordable used music is S:t Eriksplan, one street (just over a bridge) with at least four used record shops within minutes of each other. Record Hunter has new music on the ground floor and used in the basement. It's probably the best known, but I prefer a couple of other shops on the street... one a dusty basement no bigger than a large closet where nothing is sorted and all the cds are in random boxes. It makes it a real awkward hunt, but sometimes you can find real treasures (I found the latest Cinema Bizarre album today for under ten bucks). There's also another shop (can't remember the name of it now--Skivba something, I think) just down from Record Hunter where I always seem to find the motherload.

There are also some used shops in the southern district of Södermalm, one in particular (Pet Sounds) that I've heard great things about. Gonna check that one out tomorrow, as I've never been.

I'm well aware that this information may not be useful to most people, but it's the kind of reference I'd like to have when traveling to Stockholm for the first time. So I hope it's useful to someone!

Alienhits loves... Växjö, Sweden

An otherwise quite ordinary small college town in southern Sweden, Växjö has a huge distinction in my book. It is my Mecca for pop music.
The reason? All three of my favorite bands were birthed from this same town.
It’s hard to believe, but The Ark, Melody Club, and The Mo (yep, that’s the holy trinity right there) all met each other, started making music and formed in and around Växjö. It’s practically like a fairytale.
Though I’ve been to Sweden and seen two out of these three bands live (the Mo broke up before I could make it over), I’ve never traveled to Växjö. From what I've read, it’s not a town most tourists would put on their map. Plain, boring…etc. etc. Yet it’s from places like these that I think the best groups are formed. Towns like Växjö aren’t big enough to have a “scene,” so there’s no allowances for copycatting. Nobody was doing what these three bands were doing when they broke onto the scene. Though all craft pop music with strong retro influences, their image and sound would be considered pretty risky in any other part of the world than Scandinavia. They would be misconceived as trying to be ironic or just plain cheesy (in a world where cheesy = bad). The fact is, these guys are consummate musicians, as skilled at writing a perfect pop song as they are at picking out a perfect leather jacket.
Maybe I’m biased, growing up in a small town myself, but a part of me thinks that this kind of creativity is fostered best by boredom. I'd love to walk through Växjö with an Ark/MelodyClub/Mo playlist on my mp3 player. A religious experience? Not quite, but darn close.

Learn more about Växjö here