Tag: Sweden

Free and legal MP3: Sally Shapiro (the latest from Sweden’s neo-italo-disco chanteuse)

“Miracle” – Sally Shapiro

Sweden’s reclusive neo-italo-disco chanteuse (and/or duo) returns with another glistening wash of beat-driven melodrama, complete with whispery spoken French and electronic thunderstorms. Once again, it’s the airy vocals–half golden warm, half icy cold; summer and winter combined–and blasé melodicism that give this song its particular charisma. For all its scrupulous construction and electronic core, there’s something serene, even lackadaisical about the vibe, and yet not for a moment does the piece lose its sweeping, club-like theatricality. The melodies themselves are good examples of this dynamic tension, sounding at once borderline schmaltzy and emotionally penetrating.

For newcomers, note that the name Sally Shapiro is used here to refer to both the duo behind the music—producer/writer/arranger Johan Agebjörn and an unidentified female singer—and to the singer herself, whose identity is kept secret, in the interest of maintaining her privacy. (She avoids both live performances and face to face interviews.)

“Miracle” is the first available song from the album My Guilty Pleasure, slated for a fall release on Paper Bag Records. MP3 via Better Propaganda.

Free and legal MP3: the Sweet Serenades (happy/sad indie pop from Sweden)

“Die Young” – the Sweet Serenades

Despite the bright guitar line, winsome beat, perky synthesizer, and, even, bongos(!), this melodic toe-tapper is poignant through and through. (Sad lyrics to happy music is a perpetually satisfying pop music trick.) The band’s Martin Nordvall here trades vocals with guest Karolina Komstedt from Club 8, and the story is a wistful, disconnected one: smitten, he sings how he loves to linger in the morning and watch her breathe; she, forty seconds later, “not looking for love,” sings, “In the morning/You stay a little too long.” Ouch.

One of my favorite moments happens early, as the song is still setting itself up: when Nordvall sings “I haven’t been myself lately” (0:35), the words “been myself” form a sort of triplet, the second two syllables each coming ahead of the beat while—this is the cool thing—underneath, one of the guitars slashes three evocative chords precisely in rhythm with all three parts of the syncopated phrase. Okay, subtle, but it’s the kind of thing that to me signals a song of merit and purpose. I like too how one of Komstedt’s two heavy introductory sighs—before you actually hear her begin singing—come right ahead of that lyrical line.

Based in Stockholm, the Sweet Serenades are Nordvall and lead guitarist partner Mathias Näslund, who have apparently been inseparable since finding one another wearing the same then-hip Soviet CCCP hat and riding similar bikes as teens in 1991. “Die Young” is from the band’s full-length debut, Balcony Cigarettes, released last month on Leon Records.