Ryg ikke i dag

Today -- 31. May -- is World No Tobacco Day. I found out about this last night when I swung by the student union to steal toilet paper (they just throw away the mostly-empty rolls, okay?) because I can't afford to buy it. They had a nice poster up, with lots of disgusting health-related details. However, I'm not going to share those with you, because we've all heard all of that before. What I am going to share is the relevant mathematical calculation of the day -- or, more accurately, probably, year; I'm not so keen on math. Anyway:

Assuming costs around four dollars a pack, the average smoker spends $1450 a year on cigarettes. If that is you, just think -- in less than fourteen years, your smoking habit could pay off my student loans! Actually, $1450 a year seems really high. The average smoker can't be going through a pack a day, can they? So say you're only doing a pack a week -- then it would take you more like a hundred years to pay my loans off. (But still.)

Or, you know, you could just go to a whole lot of shows -- a whole lot more shows -- maybe even shows in bars. That's what I'd rather do.

Two side notes: One -- postings may be a bit sparse the next few weeks as I'm approaching finals. I'll try to have something up every once in a while, but if I don't, you'll know why -- and sorry. Two -- if anyone else has to write a term paper on Fanny & Alexander for their movie-watching class, keep in mind that it is five hours long. It doesn't matter how quickly you write -- it's still going to take you a long, long time.

Bedre og bedre

Okay. The original plan was that I was not going to write anything for the blog this morning. However -- wow, look at this. You can now listen to the brand new Shell for the Mourning on Oliver North Boy Choir's myspace. It's good. You can tell it's them, but at the same time, it sounds almost like it could be a remix itself -- the tone of the song, I think, is somewhere just in between the previous ONBC stuff (Adrenaline, for example) and Klaus & Kinski's Shell for the Mourning remix. I'm not putting it closer to either end, so think what you will. The song is nice, and very interesting, though -- it fits well with Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.

As the EP was released today, you can buy it now through iTunes. It's affordable (as long as, if you've led your iTunes to believe you live in a different country than the one in which you actually do, you reconfigure it for accuracy. For some reason unknown to me, my iTunes believes I live in the United Kingdom -- which I think would be quite nice. The US-UK exchange rate, however, is not quite so nice. Anyway). And, since it's iTunes, you can buy individual tracks rather than the whole album, if you must. The other three songs, though, are Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, Albertino, and the Klaus & Kinski remix, so I don't know why you'd want to skip.

The only one of those which you might have trouble previewing is Albertino -- but I seem to have acquired it... somewhere?... a while ago, and it's really sweet and and slow and sad and pretty, and something you ought to want to hear. Okay, this is basically me saying if I had four dollars, this is how I'd spend it. You should if you do.

Glem ikke

The other day, I saw a blog somewhere that said Oliver North Boy Choir’s Adrenaline video takes place in a supermarket. It doesn’t, really -- but if that gets more people to listen to them, I guess I can’t complain.

Another video which kind of takes place in a supermarket but isn’t exclusively in there is Pulp’s Common People. It’s from 1995, so it features, of course, a twelve-years-younger Jarvis Cocker. Yes, he has aged well, but when someone’s old enough to be one of your parents, a twelve-years-younger version can be quite nice.

Speaking of Jarvis Cocker, I just found out that he plays one of the Weird Sisters in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This knowledge has made me want, for the first time ever, to actually watch those horrid films. (I’ve got nothing against the stories themselves -- it’s film adaptations I can’t stand. The only thing they got right was Richard Harris, and he’s dead. Well, alright, Maggie Smith was mostly perfect, and Robbie Coltrane was good too, but that’s it. Now let’s have a list of everything they got horribly wrong. It starts with Harry -- who is supposed to have messy hair and wear glasses -- and a close second is Hermione -- who is supposed to be rather unattractive, not so nice-looking pedophiles the world over are counting the days until she turns eighteen... I could go on and on, but this blog is about Scandinavian music, not Harry Potter, so enough of that.)

Anyway, what I really wanted to say was that Oliver North Boy Choir is releasing their next EP, Shell for the Mourning, tomorrow, 27. May. (Yes, a Sunday. I don’t know why, but I guess when you only release digitally, you can do that). You can hear one of the tracks, Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, on their myspace. As for the others -- I guess you’ll just have to buy the album. It's on iTunes and stuff.

Oh, and a special note to those of you who read 3hive and think you've got the system beat -- please know that the track posted last week there is not the original Shell for the Mourning -- it is Klaus & Kinski's remix. It's much louder and faster than regular ONBC stuff, but after a few repeats, it starts to sound really good.

As I haven't yet heard the original Shell for the Mourning, I can't quite honestly speak for its musical quality. However, know this -- all the bits of Camilla's vocals which have been retained in the remix are just as floaty and ethereal and awesome as ever. So... yeah.

Also, here's this other cool neat thing -- Ivan and Mikkel have both started writing blogs on the ONBC site. Ivan's is mostly about music, which makes sense, but Mikkel's is about restaurants. Kind of interesting.

--DL--
Shell for the Mourning - Klaus & Kinski remix (Oliver North Boy Choir)

Meget, meget glad

Min last.fm arbejder igen! (For fire dage, det arbejdede ikke.) Jeg er så, så meget fornøjet. Det er alle for nu.

Min søster

I dag, jeg vil gerne at ønske en gladelig fødselsdag til min søster, Rebecca Phinney. Hun er ikke skandinavisk, men hun skriver og synger hendes egne sanger. Jeg synes, hun er meget godt. Du kan lytte -- og downloade -- en af hendes sangerne, My Little Stalker, i hendes myspace. (En af hendes indflydelser er Hello Saferide, hvis du kunne ikke gætte.) My Little Stalker er ikke hendes bedste, synes jeg, men nu, der hun har kun den en. Hun har ikke meget tider, men jeg håber, hun vil snart sætte mere der.

--DL--
My Little Stalker (Rebecca Phinney)

Ligesom godt

This weekend I was pretending to go grocery shopping, which meant I couldn't let any of the music I was listening to get scrobbled to last.fm. (Not that I have to worry about such a thing now, since last.fm has quit working. I am intensely annoyed.) Instead of merely moving my finger a couple of times and turning the audioscrobbler off (which, adding to the oddness of this behavior, I do quite regularly) I decided to listen to all of the mp3s Stytzer has up in anticipation of the upcoming Vesterbro Festival. This was fitting though, I guess, because we just read about Vesterbro in the new (and incredibly depressing) Danish text.

Anyway, Stytzer is a big fan of this band called Kind of Girl. While I usually take his advice -- especially after I've seen that he's talked about something more than once -- for some unknown reason, I've been resisting listening to Kind of Girl. However, it was my good fortune that Kind of Girl is playing Vesterbro; thus, about halfway through the list, I wound up listening to one of their songs, Poetry Boy. And oh my god, is it good.

You must know now that I hate poetry. Some people think this is odd, because, they say, songs are really poems. That's true, kind of -- however, songs also have music, and that makes the difference. Anyway, after listening to Poetry Boy only once, I wanted to go find and read a book of poems. Well, not really, but a very romanticized perception of poetry did cross my mind, and I briefly considered adding reading poems aloud to the acceptable activities paradigm. However, after careful consideration, I decided that not even a song as awesome as Poetry Boy could make me like straight poems. Besides -- the lyrics actually go "sing me some poetry," so I think music will be quite good enough.

Even though I haven't quite comprehended all the lyrics yet, Poetry Boy is now on par with Idyllwild (from Trembling Blue Stars' wonderful new album The Last Holy Writer), topping the list of songs I love because they are not just beautiful -- they are sad and beautiful. The other Kind of Girl songs I've heard are not quite as good as that, but, well, Poetry Boy is a lot to live up to. They're still really nice. And the album they're on -- it's called Lonely in a Modern Way. Even better.

Plus, Kind of Girl has the most informative myspace ever (it's better than some bands' official sites), and they'll even give you a ring tone for your phone. You can download two other real songs there, too.

Også, Josh, hvis du har skrevet brev til mig, det er meget godt, men nu du måtte lægge det i et konvolut og sende det til mig -- og husk, frimærker koster nu mere. Fordi, det er ikke noget godt -- for dig eller mig -- hvis brevet sætter på din bord for altid, jo?

--DL--
Poetry Boy (Kind of Girl)

Ivrig efter 'ivrig efter'

Ved du hvordan nogle ord dør? Almindeligvis, det er fordi orden er gammel, og den er ikke særlig god nu -- og der er bedre ord. Men denne -- den er ikke den, her. I gårs, jeg ved ikke hvorfor, men jeg afgører pludselig at orden ‘ivrig’ har dødt forkert. Jeg elsker orden ivrig -- den er meget spændende, synes jeg. (Nå, reelt, jeg er ivrig efter ‘ivrig efter’ meget mere end kun ivrig.) Og, jeg tror at vi måtte genoptage den.

Men, de meste mennesker -- i USA, i hvert fald -- tror, ivrig er en tåbelig, forældet ord. Så, jeg tror, jeg måtte gøre det alene. Men -- du kan hjælpe! Begynd hos lytter til Keen On Boys, med the Radio Dept. (Undskyld, du kan ikke downloade det. (Er der en dansk ord for download?))

Last night, while contemplating the idea that the English language is seriously lacking in detail, I decided that the word keen (the adjective/verb, not the dreadful noun) needed to be brought back to life. Because it’s such a good word, don’t you think? Actually, to be honest, I don’t really like the adjective (say, ‘such and such is keen’) -- I rather prefer the verbal form, ‘keen on,’ myself. It’s so much more telling to say you’re really keen on music than to say that music is keen, or, even worse, that you simply like it.

Unfortunately, using the word keen in modern conversation seems to be something of a faux pas. (I think using the term faux pas should be a faux pas, but that’s just me, so...) This means that, most likely, I’m going to have to revive a nearly-extinct word all by myself. But you can help! Start by listening to the Radio Dept.’s Keen on Boys. (For a similar-ish sentiment, although not sound, try -- well, pretty much anything by Le Sport, actually.)

And I know it’s still early yet, but the Radio Dept. will have a new album out in October. That’s keen.

Dette og det og nogle for min ego

Normally I wouldn’t do this, but it’s been raining all weekend; thus, I’m rather depressed and in need of something to pick me up.

But anyway -- wow, look at this. Today Stytzer (Hits in the Car) posted a link to where you can download the entirety of Tiger Baby’s second album, Noise Around Me. And look what else – after nearly a month of inactivity, Alison over at Peppers, Pastries and Canals also posted a link to the Noise Around Me downloads. Pretty cool that people are finally getting on the ball with listening to and talking about Tiger Baby. (However, I did notice that neither of them really said much of anything about the music -- does that mean they didn’t actually listen to it?) Pretty cool that such a great band is finally getting exposure on blogs which are more oft-read than mine. And, also, it’s pretty cool that you can download Tiger Baby’s entire second album for free.

Except, oh, wait a minute. Unfortunately, if you’re a reader of this blog (which I assume you are, since that’s what you’re doing right now) those postings won’t do you any good -- because I posted the Noise Around Me link on here nearly three weeks ago. Yes, really. I feel kind of special, having beat both Stytzer and Alison to it, especially by such a great length of time. I mean, this is quite definitely one of Strauss’ seven turning points in identity -- surpassing a role model’s performance -- and god knows I’ve been needing one of those for a while. Yeah, maybe I did have a slight advantage, since Tiger Baby is my favorite band, but on the other hand, it’s not like they rang up to tell me about it; I found out on my own. And, if, for some reason, you are just now finding out, and still haven’t downloaded the album, at least go and listen to it now.

Now: other things. If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed I’ve changed a few things visually. Nothing major -- however, I have added the first -- and only -- picture you will ever see on here. It’s the original Ashtrays drawing. (I've done quite a few, but this one is my favorite.) I drew it a very long time ago, being bored in class, and then forgot where it was. Obviously, I’ve now found it, and even though it’s not really very good, I thought it would be nice to share with you. And it has stars because, well, I’m very much into stars.

I’m also, as you may have noticed, into minimalism. Maybe having a bunch of band photos and youtube links would make things more interesting to look at, but for me, that kind of stuff is distracting and, unless placed very well, rather garish. I like the way black and white look together, so that’s how things are going to look. (Red is there only because it's on Dannebrog.) I'm sorry if you don't like the lack of color. Well, no -- I really hope you'll like it. But if you think it's truly horrible, let me know and I'll put it back.

Since I was having such fun with the HTML, I went ahead and also changed the links and sidebars a little bit -- they’re more organized now -- and widened the main column, which will hopefully make things more readable. But that’s about it.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about one of my new favorite words, which, happily, I like just as much in Danish as I do in English. Maybe I’ll talk about music then, too.

Langt post om Sigur Rós

Now that the loan period for my sociology text has expired and I’ve been forced to return it to the library, I can finally stop listening to such exorbitant amounts of Sigur Rós. (Sigur Rós, I’ve found, makes the most conducive studying music ever.) It’s not that I have anything against Sigur Rós -- but in the past two weeks, they moved from number 62 to number 9 in my last.fm overall list. And that’s with scrobbling turned off half the time. Granted, I don’t have thousands and thousands of plays on last.fm -- but Sigur Rós songs are not short. Even if they were -- that’s a lot of listening.

However, once freed from the necessity of listening to Sigur Rós in order to concentrate on my homework, I quickly realized that listening to the same band over and over is rather habit-forming, as over the past few days, I have listened to approximately twelve hundred (okay, slight exaggeration) Belle and Sebastian songs. Nothing against them either -- in fact, they’ve always been in my last.fm top ten -- but when I do things like listen exclusively to one or two bands, there’s just so much other stuff I’m ignoring. But that’s just too bad, I guess. Soon I’ll phase out of it again.

For now, despite the fact that Sigur Rós, which was the first Scandinavian band I ever liked -- we go way back, to like… eleventh grade -- and are also probably one of the most internationally recognized Scandinavian bands I like, indicating that they really don’t need the exposure that a little write-up on an even smaller blog will give them, I’m going to talk about Sigur Rós for a while. Or, more specifically, I’m going to talk about Sigur Rós music videos for a while.

I can’t remember when I saw my first one, but it was for the first track from ( ), also known as Vaka. It made a huge impression on me and I went back and watched it frequently for a long time. Its “message,” I feel, is still very strong. I won’t spoil it for you by saying what it’s about -- but it’s quite phenomenal. Well, that’s not quite the right word -- perhaps spændende would be better. (Unfortunately, if you don’t know Danish, that’s of no help to you.)

There’s a very distinct quality to all of Sigur Rós’s videos -- or at least all of those I’ve seen. Aside from the fact that the visuals seem to match perfectly, flawlessly, with the sounds (you can tell someone put in a lot of work, something which, paradoxically, seems to be increasingly rare in music videos), the videos all include a good deal of footage in slow-motion, giving the shots even more of a floaty, ethereal quality. I’m not sure how else to explain it -- but even if I watched one with the sound off, I would know it was a Sigur Rós video. Each one tells a story, too -- a story which is horribly saddening, yet in a happy sort of way.

I have trouble selecting a favorite, but the other one I’ll mention here is that of Hoppípolla. Rather than featuring gorgeous young Icelandic children, the cast is composed entirely of elderly people, and when I say elderly, I don’t just mean older, like your grandparents’ age -- I mean your great-great grandparents’ age. Really old. The thing is, though, they don’t act that way; they run around playing tricks and giggling like children. It’s not out of senility or anything like that; they’re just having fun. It doesn’t seem at all forced and it’s very endearing, and my only hope is that, if I ever live to be old, I’ll be just like they are.

If you visit the media section of Eighteen Seconds Before Sunrise, which seems to be the official Sigur Rós website, you can download literally dozens of videos (planned and live) and songs, including a lot of unreleased live material. There are also a bunch of other things -- for example, a very detailed guide which explains how to properly pronounce Sigur Rós and a variety of other Icelandic things. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to spend all day looking at these wonderful things, but if you’re in a hurry and just want to download Starálfur, I guess that’s okay too. Or, if you're a last.fm-er, you can listen to several tracks from Von there as well.

--DL--
Starálfur (Sigur Rós)

Men... hvad er lis?

I feel really bad. I completely forgot Lis Er Stille (from Århus rather than København for once) had a new album coming out. That happened more than a month ago -- Apathobvious came out 10. April. I haven’t heard the whole album, but if the one song I have heard, Lorelei, and the evidence provided by their previous EP, the Construction of the Amp-Train, are anything to go by, Apathobvious is superb.

The best description I can give their sound is kind of experimental post/prog-rock orchestreal, ethereal gorgeousness. You know how every once in a while you see one of those time-lapse videos where a snowdrop sprouts, grows up, and blossoms in about two minutes? Well, if there were a soundtrack for flowers blooming, Lis Er Stille would be it. Or, if shooting stars had a soundtrack, Lis Er Stille would be it. If ghosts did not have such a bad rep in the Western world, I would say their music sounds haunted -- haunted in a really, really lovely way. Basically -- it's the kind of stuff we lie on the floor to.

You can listen to Lorelei (which is twelve minutes long) on Lis Er Stille's myspace. The video for Lorelei -- as well as a really goofy, montage-y promo one they made for the album -- is there, too. You can also stream all four tracks from the Construction of the Amp-Train on last.fm. While, technically, it is an EP, it’s also 41 minutes long, so brace yourself -- you’re going to be stunned. Sorry, no downloads -- but you can buy both albums on iTunes, as well as a few other “real” places.

You should visit their website as well. It has the Lorelei video too, and a really nice press photo. Other than that, it’s not super useful, but it sure is gorgeous. Of course.

Også -- hvis du taler dansk og du kan fortælle mig hvad “lis” betyder, jeg vil gerne at vide. Mange tak.

Hvis jeg ønsker noget så meget, det jeg vil finde

Basically true, that. And the more a song reminds me of myself, the more I’m willing to spend hours searching down every dead end on the Internet until I find it.

This afternoon I was listening to Barometer, which I do love, and this song I’d never heard came on. At first I thought it was Hello Saferide, then (rather ridiculously) Belle and Sebastian, but in each case I quickly realized I was wrong. Once I decided the artist was unfamiliar, I was willing to let it pass -- but it kept getting better and better, and soon enough, I found myself putting my sociology down (and that’s saying something; pretty much all I do any more is read sociology) and going to see what it was I was listening to. Turns out it’s a very new artist, which was once a girl-boy thing but is now just a girl, called SoKo. She’s from Paris, but very big in Denmark right now, and I quite understand why.

I’ll Kill Her, which is the lead song from SoKo’s only EP, Not SoKute, is the perfect blend of singing and spoken-word vocals. (And her accent is wonderful.) As far as instrumentation goes, it’s just guitar, but it doesn’t seem bare at all. It’s just adorably twee -- even more so than Pelle Carlberg. Okay, way more so than Pelle Carlberg. SoKo is the twee-est thing I’ve ever seen. (And I’m not using the wrong sense here just because it rhymes. You can watch the videos -- both I’ll Kill Her and Souvenirs, which will hopefully be on the upcoming EP. Both appear to have been filmed live (I’ll Kill Her goes slightly differently in the video than the EP) and Souvenirs was filmed in a park and has birds chirping in the background.)

I’m having real trouble not using ‘adorable’ for every adjective in this write-up; it’s just so appropriate. Even the scariness of I’ll Kill Her’s lyrics does not decrease the appropriateness, because they’re just so good. ‘She’ll dump your ass for a model called Brendan’ -- how much better can you get? Granted, it doesn’t sound quite so good out of context -- or in writing -- but that’s just another excuse for you to make I’ll Kill Her yours and listen to it all the time.

As far as I know, I’ll Kill You is the only song you can download, but you can listen to three others on myspace. Other than that, I don’t know. Even if you do understand French, anything SoKo is rather hard to find. Their label, Overseas Rock, is so small it only has a myspace (where they describe the artist Little as a genetic mutation of an angel, a flower, and a ladybug (in French)), but you can buy the EP on iTunes. Make sure you only get the one called Not SoKute, though -- the other two albums are some other band.

Also -- getting the Hello Saferide link just now reminded me -- she has a new single (well, it's an old single -- The Quiz -- but the B-side is new) coming out in the UK, on Regal (Babyshambles' label! Also, unfortunately, the insufferable Lily Allen's label). It's out 14. May -- on 7" or for download, via iTunes, only -- no CDs. You can listen to the very nice B-side, I Was Definitely Made For These Times, on Regal's myspace. Regal also has this neat Hello Saferide quiz you can take to determine whether you'll like her music. It applauds when you answer the questions correctly; I'm not sure what it does if you mess up, because I got them all right.

--DL--
I’ll Kill Her (SoKo)

Gamle nyheder

This is old news, I'm sure. But lately I’ve been thinking about Peter Björn and John a lot -- lamenting the fact that, due to the United States’ ridiculously oppressive liquor laws, I am unable to see most of the bands I like. (Peter Björn and John, though, have gotten so famous stateside that their show would probably sell out before I got there, anyway. But there are other bands.)

Anyway, at some point, I began thinking of what bands I would suggest to someone if I worked in a record store and they asked for the Peter Björn and John album and we had run out. (This will never happen, though, because (one) girls don’t get to work in record stores and (two) even if they did, no one, anywhere, will hire me. (I don’t know why this is. I’m an excellent worker.) Of course, if you’d like to prove me wrong and offer me a job, please feel free to do so.) I thought of epo-555.

epo-555 is one of my favorite Danish bands -- they easily rank in the top five -- but, probably due to the fact that I’ve been unable to find any downloadable songs of theirs (and I can’t afford to buy any -- see the above paragraph for an explanation why), I have this odd tendency to go for long periods of time without listening to them. I also have only heard only a small portion of their rather sizeable catalogue of music.

My favorite, right now, is one of the newest tracks, Sugarspiced Suicide. You can find it on the Radioaktiv 7” (also available on iTunes -- but not on CD). Happily, you can now get this one scrobbled, because it is up on last.fm (along with four others, the best of which is Le Beat’s On Fire). You can also listen to all four songs from the EP on epo-555’s myspace. (That's the news.) And their website’s music/video page is quite nice as well – nine songs to stream, as well as four videos. And, okay, I lied. You can download Angelina Ballerina, from Dexter Fox.

If you like epo-555, you should also look into a couple of the band members’ side projects. Oliver North Boy Choir (who you should already know) is current epo-555 singer/guitarist Mikkel-Max Hansen and former member Camilla Florentz, plus Ivan Petersen (who's not in epo-555).

Evil Death Machine is epo-555 bassist Hans Emil Hansen (who also did Traening, which was a wonderful band that broke up in 2005 and left absolutely no evidence of their existence on the Internet or in US record stores; if you know where I can find any of their music, please let me know).

Both of these projects have rather intimidating names, but the music is actually very similar to the epo-555 sound, meaning nice, soft, soothing, dreamy. Et cetera. You can download all six tracks from Evil Death Machine’s demo on last.fm. I think everyone’s favorite seems to be Things I Stole, but they’re all good.

--DL--
Angelina Ballerina (epo-555)
Things I Stole (Evil Death Machine)

Webside forbedring (Unicovas, ikke min)

Unicova, det tysk bandet at jeg kan godt lide, har en ny webside. Det har mere besked og tinge, og det har også elleve sange at du kan lytte til og have for download -- gratis. Men de er ikke mp3erne -- de er .ziperne. Så du måtte har et program at kan unzip file, at spille dem. Du kan få sangerne på dette måde: der er en musikspiller på bundet af deres sider, og på højre, der er en pil. Hvis du klikker pilen, du kan få sanget at spiller dengang. Det er rar, tror jeg.

Hvis du kan ikke tale eller forstå tysk, de synger i engelsk, så der er ikke en sprogbarriere -- medmindre du vil gerne at læse websiden. Hvis det er rigtig, undskyld men jeg kan ikke hjælpe dig der, fordi det jeg ved heller ikke. Men med de lille at jeg kan vide om tysk (låneordene og gættere), jeg tror de skal have en ny EP ude i sommer. Jeg vil have mere besked om det senere, hvis jeg kan bekræfte det.

Hvis du har ikke et program at vil unzip file, men du tænker endnu at du måtte har sange med Unicova, der er to i almindelig måde på deres myspace. En af disse er Hush, Yeah Fly, hvor jeg synes, de lyder lige som Franz Ferdinand, men bedre. Også, forsøger at lytte til Friends Now (kun på deres webside); det er min yndling.

Unicova, that band I like from Germany, has a new website. It’s much more comprehensive, and also has eleven songs you can listen to onsite or download, free. However, they are not mp3s -- they're .zip files, so you'll need to have an unzipping program to open them. To download a song: there is a music player at the bottom of the page, and on the right, a little arrow. If you click the arrow, you can download whichever song is playing then. Pretty nice, I think.

If you don't have unzipping capabilities but still feel you must download something by Unicova, there are two in the normal way on their myspace, including Hush, Yeah Fly. I think they sound kind of like Franz Ferdinand on it, but better. Try to at least listen to Friends Now (only on their website); it's my favorite.

If you don’t know German, they sing in English, so there’s no language barrier -- unless you want to read their website. If that is the case, sorry but I can’t help you there, because I don’t know German either. My very limited understanding of the language (which is based entirely on cognates and guesswork) does, however, lead me to believe they should have a new EP out this summer. More information on that later, if I can ever manage to verify it.

--DL--
Hush, Yeah Fly (Unicova)

Foredrag om finsk musik

Hvis du er i Portland... Actually, if you are in Portland, you probably can't read Danish. So, in English -- I've just received notification of an upcoming lecture, "How Finnish Folk Music Became Rock'n'Roll." It's part of Portland State University's annual Scandinavian Sampler, and will be 12. May at 2 o'clock, room 171 in PSU's Cramer Hall. (If you want more information about the event, which has many more lectures, although no others about music, the full schedule is here.)

The presenter of the music lecture is Judith Gennett, who I actually went to the trouble of looking up. She is not Scandinavian; however, she does seem to know music well enough -- she hosts not just one but two shows on KPSU. Her programming seems heavy on sort of folk-metal, which is not really music of my type; however, it could still be an interesting lecture.

Also in Portland -- Swedes Peter Björn and John will be playing at the Doug Fir 14. May. (Yes, a Monday.) You can go if you're 21. If you're not 21, you can download their big song, Young Folks (which, interestingly enough, is hosted on the website of Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear). You can also visit Peter Björn and John's myspace, where they have many videos, or the news section of their website, where they have links to even more.

--DL--
Young Folks (Peter Björn and John)

Tiger Baby nyheder!!!

Okay, big news here. This discovery brightened my day, as hopefully it will yours. I just noticed that you can now download Tiger Baby's entire second album, Noise Around Me, from last.fm. Yes -- the entire album. I have a feeling this might be an error, so if you want this music -- and you should -- get it quickly.

But please, you should actually buy the album if you can -- especially if you're in America, because the US version includes a bonus track, which is the best cover version of JD's Love Will Tear Us Apart that I've ever, ever heard -- better than the original, even. You can sample the first two minutes of it at CD Baby.

If you need a full-length tease (igen) -- here is Magic M, one of the best. Of course, they're all one of the best. So do this. You will be in love.

--DL--
Magic M (Tiger Baby)

Pelle Carlberg i Nordamerika

Pelle Carlberg, one of my favorite Swedes, has finally announced the dates for his North American tour. Unfortunately, the tour is a lot shorter than I was hoping, and is confined to the eastern part of the continent -- the furthest west he comes is Cleveland. While it's true that the last show (the day after Cleveland) is still to be announced, flying Cleveland to Portland overnight can be rather unpleasant. So I'm out of luck -- but if you're on the East Coast of the States or Canada (or in Germany, where Pelle's spending most of this month) you might not be. Check his live page for more information.

Now, if you're not familiar with Pelle Carlberg -- how can I describe him? He's one of the few male musicians I think can accurately be labelled twee. Also, as I've said before, there's just something about him -- and his music -- which I find incredibly endearing. For quite a taste, check out last.fm, where you can listen to both of his full-length albums, plus three EPs/singles.

You can also download songs here and there. Try Clever Girls Like Clever Boys More Than Clever Boys Like Clever Girls, one of the most phenomenal (and truthful) titles ever. It's a slow download -- but good. Also, if you're into (legal) downloads, you may benefit from a visit to Labrador, one of the most generous labels in the world.

--DL--
Clever Girls Like Clever Boys More Than Clever Boys Like Clever Girls (Pelle Carlberg)