There’s this one release I’m looking forward to this 2014. Perhaps you are looking forward to it too. I know a bunch of Italians are. It’s an album. It has ten tracks. No fillers. Just hit after hit. It’s more of a three piece but people assume it’s a duo. They come from Gothenburg. They love making videos for almost every song they record. Do you need more hints? I think that’s enough clues to know who I am talking about.

Alpaca Sports are releasing their first full-length this year and is aptly titled “Sealed With a Kiss”, named perhaps after a movie. This is not the first time they appear on CD (remember the Mini-LP from 2013 on Fastcut), but it is the first time they appear on 12″ LP format. The record should be out sometime around February 24 and those who pre-order it through their bandcamp will be able to also get a bonus CD that contains remixes/covers by Red Sleeping Beauty, The Royal Landscaping Society, Tiny Fireflies, Cristina Quesada, When Nalda became punk, Invisible Twin, Pale Spectres, Boyish, Band à Part, Zipper, one day diary and The Very Most. Those who don’t pre-order, obviously won’t get this CD. By the way, this bonus CD will be named after Andreas Alpaca’s dog, “Bella’s Mixtape”. Just a detail.

It is from that CD that I’m happy to share a song. It’s by a band that we released not so long ago in Cloudberry, Boyish. Here they cover Alpaca Sports first hit “Just For Fun”. Many of the other songs from this bonus CD have been previewed already online through different blogs, soundcloud or facebook. You can possibly track all of them down if you head to Alpaca Sports Facebook page.

The album, released by Luxury Records, includes 10 songs. I read someone on the Facebook complaining that most of the songs have already been released. That means that people really crave for more Alpaca Sports! I would take that complain as a compliment of course. The tracklist looks like this:
01. Just for fun
02. Will you ever come back home?
03. She’ll come back for Indian summer
04. Just like Johnny Marr
05. As long as I have you
06. Telephone
07. He doesn’t even like you
08. The old oak tree
09. You and me
10. I was running

Perhaps you really want to complain, and think that this is a rip off. That there’s only 4 new songs (2 ,4, 8 and 9) and you better download them or some other ‘wise’ idea you may have. I guess you have the right to think that way, but you are being totally stupid. It is clear you’ve been living in an MP3 age where an album concept doesn’t mean anything. You just want throwaway songs that you listen a bunch of time and then they can just sit in some folder in your computer without being clicked again for ages. You just don’t get it. These songs are the work of 3 or so years of the band and so it makes all sense to include them. They are their hits. How can’t you include them? They were released as singles and they have actually left the B sides out of the album, just like every other band did back in the day, when albums meant something. Because albums are for rediscovering these kind of hits. I could play these songs forever, I always find a little something, a detail, every time I listen to them. Perhaps this has to do with me known Andreas, but I always end up understanding each piece of lyrics better and better. They are as honest as they can be. Very autobiographical even. So why wouldn’t I want them to be in the album for me to listen time and time again, with the comfort of them being one after the other? I don’t know. Only if you listen to them as Mp3s then it doesn’t make any sense. Then I tell you, you are DUMB, because you are missing out.

The album counts again with Ray Kimura doing the artwork. I have to say this is my favourite illustration she’s made for Alpaca Sports. And she has done every single release. It’s by far the most colorful too. And the first one that doesn’t have any white background. I remember when doing the Alpaca Sports single for Cloudberry I wanted something like this with the jungle/Indiana Jones, kind of feeling. We did try. But it didn’t work out. It was looking too green. This time it has worked out wonders.

So we all know that 6 of the songs in the album are perfect pop songs. They’ve been released as singles and they have sold out or are about to being sold out. These songs have catapulted the band to play at Indietracks, Madrid Popfest, Berlin Popfest, New York Popfest, and soon Birmingham Popfest. They have also played their home city Gothenburg, Stockholm and Malmö. They also will go south, across of Malmö soon but I think that’s top secret yet. They also toured Japan for a week last November. It’s been a hurricane couple of years for them. But I’m not surprised. I wasn’t in love the first time I heard them, I admit, and I feel embarrassed, I could have released “Just For Fun” perhaps. It was only after listening to “She’ll Come Back for Indian Summer” that I knew that this band was special. That they were something else. But it was a bit too late, though I was still lucky to have worked with them on the one 7″. I would have loved to work with them in every single release. Why wasn’t I in love? I simply don’t understand. These days I play that song and I can’t help myself from singing it.

I’ll tell you a secret then. I have listened to the other 4 songs. They are all proper singles in their own way. They could have saved them for 7″s in the future. But they haven’t. “Will You Ever Come Back Home” and it’s hand-claps. That must be Carl hand-clapping. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind. Haven’t you seen Carl Miyagi hand-clapping like a madman at every Alpaca Sports gig? That’s his thing. But you’d think this is a happy song, it’s not. It might be as well the most melancholic song in the album albeit it’s upbeatness. Amanda as always is brilliant accompanying Andreas in the song with her shy almost subterranean vocals. I melt. “Why do you call me up every time you look for a fight”. That’s the line that opens the song and still I’m sure in this situation you and me would ask every single ex-girlfriend we’ve had if they’ll ever come back home.

Andreas must have a couple of heroes, definitely Davey from Brilliant Corners and Julian from The Hit Parade. Johnny Marr is another of those heroes. Here is his tribute to him. Nostalgic, melancholic, this song is so light, it could break, reaching it’s subtle climax with a sincere line, promising the girl that “I’ll bring my guitar and play just like Johnny Marr.” You wonder which girl would turn that offer down, right? “Don’t make my heart break” asks Andreas wearing his feelings on his sleeve. Only a terrible girl could do that!

Even less upbeat, a song that seems to be sealed with longing and memories, is track number 8, “The Old Oak Tree”. I wonder how common are oak trees in Gothenburg. The song has a cinematic quality to it. “I remember when you kissed me for the first time in the pouring rain”.  The acoustic guitar in the background. I can picture the rain. I can imagine this huge old oak tree where the adolescent couple would get inside and dream of a future filled with lovesongs that never happened. Remembering that teenage love that hurts. The “Old Oak Tree” seems like a pause in the album, making you feel vulnerable and ready for the two last songs.

The last song being the dancefloor hit “I Was Running”. But just before it is “You and Me”. If you’d thought it would be more hopeful than “The Old Oak Tree” you are mistaken. By now you probably have noticed that Alpaca Sports songs are heartfelt and full of details that hide behind the veil of their upbeat melodies. “The sun will never shine on me the way it shines on you”. Post-breakup sadness. Secluded in the house, in the room. Don’t want to go out. Wise words, isn’t it true that when there’s a breakup only one, not the two, gets a broken heart? That’s how it is. That “You and Me” that we dream to happen again, but it’s lost forever. “Every tear falling down let’s me know that I care”. How hard it is to forget. How hard it is to let go. Sometimes you never let go.

It’s surprising how simple it seems for Alpaca Sports to, in simple words, craft lyrics that express so much sentiment. And they call them twee. The f*ck they are twee. This is serious. They don’t sing about kittens or nonsense. There are a few bands out there that have no shame to pour their feelings in their songs like they do.

So I could tell you and sell you do the idea that the album is worth for these four new songs. And that is totally right too. Even for the one song the album is worth getting. I don’t know how many copies are being pressed. I want to think that the album will sell pretty well and hopefully it will be sold out within a year. I want to dream that they will keep writing perfect songs, that I will see time and time again Andreas, Amanda and Carl, with their guests musicians on stage. At every single festival I attend. I don’t have that many contemporary bands that I follow with this determination, that I try to dissect every song, that I want to learn the lyrics as I’ve done in the past with bands like TCR, Throw That Beat in the Garbagecan!! or McCarthy, top bands for me. Alpaca Sports is one of the few (from the top of my head I do the same with contemporary bands Liechtenstein, The Felt Tips and Northern Portrait). They are writing modern indiepop classics. And it’s possible that you won’t even notice until 20 more years have passed when Andreas is still supporting his Örgryte football team in 3rd division for yet another year, Amanda is a successful designer and Carl is making videos for high-profile 2035 Beyoncés or Taylor Swifts of that age.. You don’t want to wait that late, right? Better catch the “Sealed with a Kiss” bus then.

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Listen
Boyish – Just For Fun