Bringing together a host of seemingly disparate bands with the uniting factor being that they are all from Sweden, Svenskt is a varied release also in terms of quality. While some of the tracks pass by so discreetly as not to leave behind any trace of their presence at all, others penetrate your consciousness so deeply, leaving behind an impression that lasts long after the record has stopped playing.

Audrey and Suburban Kids With Biblical Names are two such bands who fall into the latter category. What makes them extra special is how they do it. With subtlety, and without a fuss, both bands gently create such dazzlingly pretty songs, reflecting the country they come from. Suburban

Kids do this so well that they even manage to make the somewhat irrelevant and dated institutionof marriage sound appealing to this jaded and cynical reviewer (see ‘Marry Me’). It’s no mean feat. So, how exactly do they do it?

Well, the idea of creating a Swedish sound may not at all be intentional. As Johan Hedberg from Suburban Kids says, ‘It’s not our aim to sound Swedish when we record’, rather it’s, ‘To sound like music we hear from all kinds of cultures and countries’. Whereas Victoria Skoglund from Audrey prefers, ‘The idea of making music as pictures, as landscapes. But I can't remember thinking of that in the moment we're making new songs. It's more a feeling that you catch after.’ Nonetheless, the music does seem to be influenced by its surroundings, though this comes about more in a chance like way. As Skoglund goes on to say, ‘I think that we get most ideas for new songs from all the things we're passing by and see and hear every day. It could be anything. And I think it depends a lot on who you ask in the band.’ Hedburg tells Maps that his band is influenced more by a sound or an instrument. And so it is with both Audrey and SKWBN that they are able to extract an element from something, and expand on that, consequently taking their sound into a dreamlike state, almost using it as a form of escapism. ‘It's a state where just the four of us decide where it should take us’, says Skoglund, ‘Sometimes it feels like the time you rehearse is the time you let go of everything else but the music.’

Inevitably, the media are always searching for some sort of easy classification to tag a band with. The niceness of the Suburban Kids’ sound has led them to being pigeon holed into the genre of “twee pop”. Hedburg responds, ‘I wouldn’t call our music twee. It seems as if the music is happy these days it gets the name twee automatically.’ There’s a much broader scope to it, reflecting Hedburg’s listening habits which span from De La Soul to Faust. And while the band may make happy music there are serious as well as playful elements contained within. ‘You need some humour to balance the more serious parts’, he says. Audrey also strike a balance, though in a much darker way, combining the beautiful with the hauntingly sinister. ‘I think that we are sometimes in the middle of bad and good weather, where you don't know whether it should rain or shine’, says Skoglund. ‘Sometimes it shows, sometimes it doesn't. You need the bad to create the good. To get the balance and to make it more alive. So, yes there is a dark side as well.’

Skoglund continues, ‘It has to be pure to be real. Every second of the song is truly connected to everyone in the band.’ Indeed, this unity between the band members is just one of the factors contained within the complex interplay which underpins Audrey’s and Suburban Kids’ music. There’s a hint of something otherwordly, something deeper, and a striving for truth, all of this combining to create music which is utterly compelling.

Review by Holly Wild
www.myspace.com/svenskt