The Fox, The Hunter And Hello Saferide

Can't even begin to tell you how thrilled I was to discover that there's a brand new Hello Saferide album - and it's out now! The Fox, The Hunter And Hello Saferide is Annika Norlin's first new release for six years under the Hello Saferide banner - an awful long time in anyone's book - but thank goodness the wait is finally over. I wasn't even sure if Annika was still interested in making music, to be honest, but thank goodness she is, as she's one of the finest lyricists around and few have the ear for a tune that she possesses.

The standout track for me on first listen is The Crawler, which chronicles the joys and sorrows of using a community swimming pool - the titular character being a selfish git who spoils the harmony and orderliness of the twenty regular swimmers by jumping in the middle lane, flailing his arms about - literally and metaphorically making waves - and generally ruining the experience for everyone else. In the end his exasperated co-swimmers encircle him, hold his face under the water and "wait for the waves to slow down". How could you not love a song like this?

Hello Saferide - The Crawler

It took a little while to find anywhere that was selling the album, but in the end iTunes came up trumps and I downloaded it from there. Best £7.99 I've spent all month.

Song of the Day

Annika Norlin covers fellow Swedes the Deportees' song The Doctor In Me. Nice.

Songs for the dumped

After self-pity comes bitterness; here are three prime musical examples, especially recommended if you like your Swedes bitter. And trust me, if you've ever been dumped (as I'm sure most of us will have at one time or another) you'll not hear a more staisfying, or indeed better, bitter song all year than Lucky You. Let the catharsis commence.

The Wannadies - Lucky You mp3

Hello Saferide - Last Bitter Song mp3

The Bear Quartet - What's Your Virtue? mp3

Simply Fred

Oh look, if it isn't the ace video for the brand new single from Säkert! Warning: contains young people (and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Annika Norlin herself).

Baby love

It's the fantastic new single from Juni Järvi featuring Annika Norlin, it's titled (I Love It When You Call Me) Baby, and it's out today!



Buy the mp3 single here

Read all about it at Eardrums

Singles of the Decade ii

More choice choices from the decade almost past!

The Innocence Mission - One For Sorrow, Two For Joy mp3

Absolutely beautiful, and originally posted here in 2007 by Spike as part of this post.



Hello Saferide - I Was Definitely Made For These Times mp3

Released as a single in the UK in 2007, and arguably one of Annika Norlin's greatest compositions, this song has, bizarrely, failed to appear on any Hello Saferide album to date. Quite simply, it is three minutes and eight seconds of pure, unbridled pop genius!



Harmonica - Rocking Girl mp3

Not a lot of people know this track. But they should as, like the Hello Saferide song, it's joyous, life-affirming stuff. Rocking Girl originally appeared here as part of this Three of a Kind post on Norwegian pop.

Right, that'll do for today I think. More of the same at some point in the not-too-distant future I shouldn't wonder.

Hometown Boys & Girls

Swedish indie classic ahoy! It's The Wannadies' 1990 gem My Home Town...



And here's Min Hemstad, a Swedish language cover of the very same song from Annika 'Hello Saferide' Norlin's other project Säkert (which, thanks to having known and liked the Wannadies' version for years, now becomes the first Säkert song I've ever understood the lyrics to!)



The Wannadies - My Home Town mp3

The Säkert version of the song can be found on the new Razzia Records compilation, There's A Razzia Going On Volume 2, which also, rather thrillingly, includes a previously unreleased Hello Saferide song, I Fold, and which can be ordered here.

The snow is always whiter on the other side

Watch out, watch out, there's a new Hello Saferide single about. It's called Arjeplog, it’s "about the north of Sweden, about going to the city and missing the countryside, and about going to the countryside and missing the city. It’s about love, and it’s about spooning without one arm getting numb" (so says that there Annika Norlin), it's taken from the album More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide and it's accompanied by this recession-beating video, filmed in five minutes at a cost of precisely nothing. Hurrah!

A Camping it up

Blimey, I never saw this one coming. After an eight-year hiatus, A Camp, side project of Cardigans singer Nina Persson and Atomic Swing frontman Niclas Frisk, are back. The new album, Colonia, will be released in Scandinavia on January 28th, England and continental Europe on February 2nd, and North America on April 28th. (They've plumped for a "coldest goes first" policy.)

Ahead of that here's the video for new single Stronger Than Jesus (which can also be found on the latest Word Of Mouth CD with this month's Word magazine).



On a similarly Swedish note, many congratulations to Hello Saferide's Annika Norlin, who's just won a prestigious Swedish Grammis award for Best Lyrics. Well done that woman!

Hello Saferide My Old Friend

So, have you got the new Hello Saferide album yet then? (and if not, why not?!) Goodness me it's a corker. But then, with the combined talents of HS's Annika Norlin plus Popsicle legend Andreas Mattsson on production/guitar/piano/guest vocals and (on Sancho Panza) co-writing duties, More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide was never going to be anything less than brilliant.

Here's Annika performing a rather wondrous acoustic version of album closer Arjeplog, in some woods. If you've ever hankered to see a grown woman doing onamatopoeiac impressions of gusting winds, moving trains and the sound of footsteps in the snow, then this is the vid for you!



You can buy More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide as an mp3 album from Sweden's splendid Klicktrack mp3 shop. Best £7.60 you'll spend all week.

Definitely made for these times

While the Suburban Kids continue to drag their heels getting their album finished to any kind of schedule, there's been no such tardiness from fellow Swede Annika Norlin: Hello Saferide's second album was mooted for release this autumn, and that's exactly what's going to happen. The Andreas Mattsson-produced More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide will be hitting the shops, as they say, on September 24th. And here, rather thrillingly, is the first single from it, Anna.

Hello Saferide - Anna mp3 (available for 7 days)

You can pre-order More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide here. The first 200 copies have been signed by Annika herself, so best not hang about!

Trivial Pursuits

Spike (Sutti) and me (Hughesy) have our own daily trivia quiz. There are ten multiple choice questions to answer each day, on a variety of subjects. Fancy giving it a try? You can find it here.*

N.B. Although an enthusiastic bunch, we're mostly a bit rubbish at this answering questions malarkey, so if you're some sort of ultra-competitive trivia wunderkind you may wish to seek out a more challenging league instead. But if you're just after a bit of a laugh and a chance to answer a few questions each day, step right up!

*it's completely free, and registering only takes a few seconds.

Hello Saferide - The Quiz mp3 (for 7 days)

Buy Hello Saferide stuff.

There's a Razzia going on

Hello you! Guess what? Stockholm's Razzia Records have a fantastic-looking compilation album, There's A Razzia Going On, coming out on June 18th. Just have a butcher's at the goodies on offer:

01. Hello Saferide - I was definitely made for these times
02. Adiam Dymott - Memory loss
03. Konie - My Life Is Shit But I Am Funky (remix)
04. I Are Droid - Blood & Ether
05. Firefox AK vs Laid -Once I was like you
06. Maia Hirasawa - Melody
07. Tripoli - Walk on
08. Säkert! - Det var tre månader sedan idag
09. They Live By Night - Meaningless repair
10. Timo Räisänen - Spill your beans
11. Svenska Kürkan - Besatt
12. The Plan - Stay Awhile
13. Jonna Lee - I wrote this song
14. Mange Schmidt feat. Thomas Rusiak & Eye N I - Håll käften del
15. Thunder Express - Switch
16. Tellevika feat. Firefox AK - Eric
17. Ebbot Lundberg & Mattias Bärjed - Coming down cold

The Hello Saferide track - indubitably one of the best UK-released singles of 2007 - would be worth the admission fee alone, but with Firefox AK, Maia Hirasawa, Timo Räisänen, Jonna Lee and Annika Norlin's side-project Säkert also present, this album just has to be a very good thing indeed.

More exciting Hello Saferide news: Annika's announced on the HS website that the band've been busy recording a new album, which "will be released September-ish". As if that wasn't enough on its own, it turns out the album's being produced by Swedish indie pop legend Andreas Mattsson of Popsicle, Sweet Chariots and Andreas Mattsson fame (and who I wrote a gushing tribute to in this entry)!

So anyway, it's all good, to borrow a phrase from that nice Sarah Assbring lady. And, while we're here, let's have some classic Hello Saferide and Popsicle by way of a celebration. Why not!

Popsicle - Histrionics mp3 (left click - available for a week)

Hello Saferide - Valentine's Day mp3 (right click)

Buy Razzia Records stuff from their webshop.

Three of a Kind #26

Last seasonal post, I promise! This is my only nod to the new year, since I'm not one for making resolutions.
I'm hoping 2008 will be full of music that excites me, as 2007 was.
For today's three of a kind we have songs from three fine bands/artists Camera Obscura, Asobi Seksu and Hello Saferide which acknowledge the new year, even if they don't exactly celebrate it!

From Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi:
Camera Obscura - Happy New Year mp3 (available for 7 days)

From Citrus:
Asobi Seksu - New Years mp3 (available for 7 days)

From Would You Let Me Play This EP 10 Times A Day?:
Hello Saferide - 2006 mp3 (available for 7 days)

Please visit the aritists' websites to find out where you can buy their superb music. Happy new year!

"Egg nog on your collar and a twinkle in your eye"

My favourite song from Christmas '06 probably had to be a toss-up between Hello Saferide's iPod X-mas and Cry Cry Christmas by the Sweptaways featuring Magnus Carlson. Now, still being a relatively new kid on the blogging block, I wasn't around to eulogise about either of these songs at the time but I did allude to the greatness of the Sweptaways' seasonal offering in one of my first posts on this blog. It being the middle of June, though, it would've been a bit unseasonal to have been linking to it back then! But I think we're on safe ground now; so, for a limited time only, here's the wonderful Cry Cry Christmas in all its festive glory.

The Sweptaways featuring Magnus Carlson & The Gray Brigade - Cry Cry Christmas mp3 (available for 7 days)

Like what you hear? Then why not nip over to the Klicktrack mp3 shop and buy the Sweptaways' Cry Cry Christmas EP, which also features: Silverbells (again featuring Magnus Carlson), En vintersaga (Icy Version), and a remixed version of Wuthering Heights. Best £2.40 you'll ever spend!

"Don't be afraid, it's only me"

Last night kippers and I went to see comedian Sean Lock at my local theatre. He was brilliant, by the way (that's Lock, not kippers!). Also attending was an actor who has appeared in many British comedy shows who happens to live in the same town as me. (He was particularly ace in Look Around You.)

Today, on the way home from seeing kippers to the station, I found myself shambling down the pavement behind said local actor and I would like to say the following:

Dear Michael Fenton Stevens,

I am not stalking you. To show how nice and non-stalky I am, here are four great songs about stalking, all available for 7 days, so we can laugh off our humourous misunderstanding. Please don't take me to court.

Cancel The Astronauts - I Am The President Of Your Fanclub (And Last Night I Followed You Home) mp3 (artist website) (This really is a corking song. If you only download one song today, I'd like it to be this one.)

Hello Saferide - Highschool Stalker mp3 (artist website)

Liechtenstein - Stalking Skills mp3 (right click) (artist website)

David Bowie - Love You Til Tuesday mp3 (artist website) (I love the way he laughs at the absurdity of rhyming branch - said the southern way - with romance during this song.)

You can buy music by the mentioned artists here, here and here.

Yours sincerely,

Spike

Three of a kind #12

Two of my favourite Swedish artists, Hello Saferide and Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, have recently been on tour together in Brazil. During their time there, the Brazilian website Pocketmusic - who like to record bands performing songs in unusual places - filmed them. Here are the results.

First up it's Hello Saferide's Annika Norlin playing a song I'd not heard before, I Wonder Who Is Like This One - in a lift! (complete with baffled civilians getting on and off said lift!)



Next, it's those wacky Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, who seem to have gained an extra member since last year, performing another new (to me) track, Middle Class Life, at night, on the streets of São Paulo. (as opposed to the streets of San Francisco!)



Finally, Maia Hirasawa, who Spike wrote about a few months ago (and who was on this tour as part of Hello Saferide), performs the song Crackers from her solo album Though, I'm Just Me, outside some sort of late-night newsagents. (nice t-shirt, missus!)



And, while we're at it, here are some oldies-but-goodies from the aforementioned trio.

Hello Saferide - Highschool Stalker mp3 (right click and "Save Target As")

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - Rent a Wreck mp3 (right click)

Maia Hirasawa - Gothenburg mp3 (left click; up for 7 days)

Buy Swedish music from the Klicktrack mp3 shop