I first heard Edweena’s song “Thunderboy” a few weeks ago, and immediately fell in love with its youthful, uplifting and illuminated beauty. Last week I finally listened to the Swedish band’s debut LP “Solar Days and Lunar Nights”, which came out in September, and realized they have made a whole album based on the same wonderful ingredients: powerful, open and sparkling Bonham-inspired drumming; deep and melodic bass lines whose explosive style and charisma wouldn’t shame ex-Interpol’s Carlos Dengler; heavy, dense and condensed “You Made Me Realise” guitars, blissfully imploding into their own effects-laden heart; and beautiful melodies sung in the choirboy harmonies of Ride and Pale Saints.
This basic template is tinged in several of the album’s ten addictive songs with additional great touches recalling the effortless charm of the Stone Roses, the groovy and broken intensity of Drum and Bass, the outsider romanticism and chiming guitars of the Smiths, the motoric chic of Stereolab and the sensitivity and thrill of early Placebo.
Edweena’s Magnus Thelin (vocals and guitar), Henning Runolf (drums) and Johannes Göthager (vocals and bass) have been playing together since 2011 and sound like a very tight and mutually-complementary unit. Their music offers an extremely competent and compelling take on the power trio format. In “Solar Days and Lunar Nights” they have made an utterly delightful album, with the perfect combination of dreaminess and dynamism, sweetness and grit.
Nice. How do you come across this angelic music?
Ah! You expect me to reveal my sources?
(Heard “Thunderboy” on http://shoegazekid.tumblr.com/ and was smitten).