No old band today (beware! as if they were the bubonic plague a girl told me that old bands only draw middle-age white male people and a guy said that they only bring old women that shop at Saga and Tenfield), but I want to talk a bit about a record I’ve been listening a lot and a band and a friend that I hold dear. Hope that’s ok with you my male middle-aged white and Tenfield shopping female friends.
The story begins a long time ago and it has continued until this day. Meetings in different countries and a good friendship. Strange of it all I’ve seen the band play live. It’s a dream of mine that seems won’t happen anytime soon.
There were plans to try a Peruvian restaurant in Stockholm. Called “Tumi” (the name of a pre-Incan ceremonial knife) and located in hip Söder, the restaurant was promising. Plans that went back for months since my friend Erik had mentioned it to me while he was in NYC on his way to Peru. I had to try it of course as I have tried Peruvian places in Berlin or London. You know, quality control.
Of course I didn’t count that it was going to be closed when I arrived there on Sunday. The website clearly states that they are open until 9pm every Sunday. But it was Easter Sunday. Perhaps the chefs and line-cooks wanted to pray? Who knows. It was just closed. Lights out. And there was me disappointed. Then Caro was disappointed. Gustaf saved the night suggesting a Turkish place around the area. Alex would soon join us too.
Around the area there used to be another Peruvian restaurant. Much smaller. But it closed some time ago. It had the fame of throwing a dinner for Mario Vargas Llosa after he received the Nobel Prize in Stockholm. Alex told me it was pretty good. You have to trust him after a childhood in Lima and a lifetime of making ceviches for his friends in Sweden.
The dinner at the Turkish restaurant, and then the beers at the Skrapan, at the Himlen bar on the top, and some more beers around the corner at Imperiet, were just one more episode to these meetings around the world with Alex, mastermind of HaHa Fonogram and bassist extraordinaire of my beloved Sad Day For Puppets. Of course after all these beer we stopped to have some tunnbrodsrulla. Happy days.
These days he is involved also with another band worth checking out Then Comes Silence. A mix of guitar pop and doom metal if that can actually happen. It’s pretty interesting. They call it goth-gaze. My favourite song might be the one where Anna Eklund, vocalist of SDFP, appears doing a duet: “She Lies in Wait”.
Chatting like it was yesterday since he had visited NYC or Miami, talking about the state of record labels, bands, the scene, and of course Stockholm and Lima. Time goes fast talking with good friends. My visit to Sweden’s capital ends up being too short. Gladly Alex gave me a copy of Sad Day For Puppets last effort, “Come Closer”. It will have to wait until I get to NYC for me to listen to it.
The album was released last year by HaHa Fonogram for the world and Fastcut Records for Japan. Touring Japan, I think that’s Alex’s highlight for the band. I can’t wait to go visit. They are on a league of their own he tells me. I notice that the artwork for both albums is different. In Japan we get a colorful artwork, a girl holding balloon, the other edition gets a tropical logo with palm leaves and red parrots as the central piece. The background looks like wet wood out of a rainforest. It brings to mind the Amazon and it’s mystery and it’s invitation to exploration.
10 songs. Classic Sad Day for Puppets Fare, catchy poppy shoegazy tracks. No surprises. Some heavier guitars perhaps on “Living Dead” and “Destroyer”. But yet it’s what I always expect from them, the same quality but something has made me listen to the album for two weeks straight now. I’m hooked. Perhaps trying to find an explanation would be futile but I keep thinking why.
Many years ago we did a 7″ together. I still make the joke that Alex gave me their best ever song, “Again” for the A side. I still believe this. I was lucky! But in this album, the whole body of it is so tight, that it’s such a pleasure to listen to it from start to finish again and again. Maybe it was a premonition this “again”.
The album has been produced by Alex and Tom Van Heesch who also mixed it. It was recorded at Big Island Sound and Uhr-Omrädet in Stockholm. At one point when I listen to songs like “Sugar” and “Shiver and Shake” I can see the band getting much and much closer to poppier sounds of classic indiepop from the 80s. The luminosity of “Human Heart” is a unique one for me, it’s so bright, so hopeful. And then immediately comes “Senseless”, a song that sounds like an updated Primitives. Perfect slice of pop!!! “How could I ever love someone else?” asks Anna and how could I ever come up with a reply to such a sweet question.
The album starts to wind down with the upbeat but yet melancholic “Bye Bye”, though it’s not goodbye as “Bells” closes the album in a much sadder note. But I haven’t even had the time to stop and think when the album starts again for me. “Cold Hand” is the cracker that opens Come Closer with a line that instantly tells you that you have to pay attention “It’s a cold hand touching me now”. It’s the story of a dead love. Shaking, shivering and asking to let go. The sort of honesty that grabs me and actually doesn’t let me go.
The synthethizers announce me that I’m reaching song number two, “Stardust”. Darker. The album enters into a stage of mystery. Pounding basses. Anna turned into stone. Hope is lost in this song. Everything crumbles within the beauty of the melodies. And then our poppy hearts go bursting to full sing-along happiness with “Human Heart”. And then we are repeating all songs again.
I come some months late to this album. Should be one of the best of 2013 definitely. But of course we know end-of-year lists are usually made by deaf people. Senseless people! Now I urge you to check it out. I believe you can still get the album from Fastcut and HaHa Fonogram. Do yourself that favor. And if you aren’t that familiar with their music, well you should get their whole discography. There are so many classics in it like “Hush” (which I’ve DJed a bunch of times!), “When You Tell Me That You Love Me ” or “Marble Gods” to name just a few!
You do that, and I’ll keep dreaming a good indiepop festival will call them to play. Come closer.
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