Day 60. Tomorrow have to go again to the post office. That’s all the news I have. Now it is 2 months since I started sheltering in place.  As many of you I’ve been playing Animal Crossing a lot these past weeks. Want to be friends? Maybe that way I can get some people to comment on the blog! It’s been a bit quiet!

New music from Bandcamp, found this weekend.

The Honeydrips: Our friend Mikael is back with a new fantastic track called “Here Comes the Sun #1″! The ex-Dorotea, and also half of Salt Lake Alley (who have a 7” on Cloudberry, don’t miss that one!) has made a name under The Honeydrips, already a classic band when you think of Swedish indiepop, with so many indiepop hits in their hand. This song is no exception to that. Terrific!

Did You Die: from Victoria, Canada. The capital of British Columbia. I visited once. So nice. How I miss traveling. The band’s latest is a digital single, just the one song, called “Shine So Real”. You’ll find nose, and jangly guitars buried in it, and what’s kind of interesting too, is that the song was recorded in an airplane hangar.

Glaswen: more shoegaze sounds, now from Russia. Noisier than the previous band, their latest track is called “Definition”. It seems that during the pandemic shoegaze music is much easier for me to find than canonical indiepop. It is an interesting trend.

Blume: now another shoegaze band, but on the other side of the spectrum, not the noisy but the fragile and dreamy. This project by Arthur Bennell from Edmonton, Canada, has released a new EP called “Take your Time” with 4 songs. They was all recorded by Arthur in hos own computer.

Star-Crossed Lovers: last shoegaze sounds for today. The debut EP from this California cambo! It is self-titled and has 5 songs. It is also on the dreamy sound, with jangly guitars. I think a bit of Secret Shine when listening to this. That’s a good thing, right?

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This is definitely a blast from the past. I was going down memory lane and remembered those days of Myspace, when we befriended bands and musicians and listened to their tracks easily. I remember discovering so many bands then. All sorts. Old and new. And from all over the world. I always say that if there hadn’t been that social platform, Cloudberry would have been a total different thing. Who knows, maybe it wouldn’t have existed.

One of the bands I discovered there was the Swedish Lucky Lucky Pigeons. I really liked their catchy tunes. They were fun and they had a special punk attitude to them. I was a fan. I think I wrote them at some point. I can’t remember tho. It was before Cloudberry. Maybe I wanted to do something with them on Plastilina Records? Maybe not. Maybe I dreamed that. I do know, that I found some of the members if not all on Last.fm. I was friends with them there. Those were the days when you added people and it didn’t feel weird. Or maybe it is like that still and I’ve become old and have strange ideas. Who knows. The fact being, I was a fan.

Today I can’t remember much about them. I didn’t get round getting a copy of their demo CDR that they self-released as the “Happy Birds Day EP” in 2006 and that was later re-released by Freedom Road Records (FR009). It had three terrific songs on it, mind you. Not surprising the UK label ran by Russell Barker re-released them also on CDR. These songs were “Who Smells Marshmallows?”, “Lucky Song” and “N to the Ice”.

The band was formed by Hanna Olsson on guitar and backing vocals, Elin Pärsson on keyboards and backing vocals and Amna Maksumic on vocals and tambourine. Artee 123 is credited for drums and bass on the CDR. That was a drum machine.

Happily the band had more songs. I know that the track “Red Santa” was included in the Cherryade compilation “A Very Cherry Christmas 2” (CHY 006) in 2006. And then their terrific track, “Keep On, Kingie!” was included in the CDR comp “Club King Kong: Med Musiken I Mitten Vol. 2 Säsongen 06-07” released by Donkeyboys Recordings  (DNKYBYS002). This was a compilation that was put out by Club King Kong, a cool indiepop night from Stockholm.

Other songs by the band were “Knife for Life”, “No Lips on Locos” and “Make Money Money”, which I believe were intended for a second EP titled “Bird Flu”. Was that ever released? It looks as if it is available in digital formats and include some remixes for “Who Smells Marshmallows?”. There are the following remixes for this track, “TIAC remix”, “Lucky Misu remix”, “Compute remix” and “Jmyhaze Beatbox remix)”.

Something that we can’t forget is that there was a video for “Keep on Kingie” that of course you need to check out! This video was made by Amna Maksumic and Linnea Rutz. This same account, which probably belongs to a member, has some live videos of the band playing in the city of Gävle. This first video have the band playing “N to the Ice” and “Red Santa”.  The second video has “Make Money Money”, “Who Smells Marshmallows?” and “No Lips on Locos”, while a third video has “Keep on Kingie” and “Knife for Life”. There is also a collage of photos on video with the title “2005-2008“. I am guessing those are the years the band existed.

Then I find an article on Dala-Demokraten, and this tells me that the band was formed in Dalarna, in Borlänge precisely. They were teenagers then and attended the Kristinegymnasiet school. They mention that they weren’t really accepted in Falun, as they were making lovely indiepop and the city was more into hard rock. I learn too that they played the Seaside Festival in Falun in 2008.

There are a few blog posts about them, like on well remembers blogs like Unpopular or Skatterbrain, though aside from praising the band (well deserved of course) don’t add any details about them. I am curious for example if the band members ended up playing in other bands. Who’d know?

Another article, on DT.se, tells that the band’s first gig was at the Christmas party at Forssaklackskolans. They band also played Emmaboda Festival and the Lund club Phone Me. Here are more details too, for example Hanna hails from Falun, Amna from Borlänge and Elin from Gagnef. All are the same age. They were in the humanities program in the Kristinegymnasiet. They were fans of The Radio Dept. and the Magnetic Fields. The band name comes from an inner joke, they translated “turturduvor” (lovebirds) into Lucky Lucky Pigeons!

But I still look forthem and find out that Amna Maksumic works in the film industry. She worked for example as a production manager on the movie Midsommar. She also was project manager of the TV series “Älska mig”. She even acted on a short called “Half Brother”.

The other band members are harder to track. Still this has helped me remember them, remember those days of Myspace when indiepop was once again exciting. I hope you also enjoyed this trip down memory lane and if you remember anything else, about the band, please leave a comment! Would love to know if they had more songs, or if they had been involved in any other projects!

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Listen
Lucky Lucky Pigeons – Keep On Kingie