Potpourri 18 October – tracks from Lush Lullaby (Denmark), Little Lies (Sweden) and Dogsmile (Sweden)

Our little break attending a music conference and writing it up is over, so we move rapidly back into a quick fire session of short, sharp reviews to try to catch up, starting with –

Lush Lullaby (Denmark) – I want the sun (single)

Don’t we all, mate!? Summer is a long way off now and the rain in Spain isn’t falling only on the plain.

You might remember Lush Lullaby, the band headed by Lars Bredahl, they were here a few months back with a post-punky track, ‘Demons’, from their EP.

I noted then that there was “more in the way of melody than you’d expect from punk. Not exactly full-blown hooks but not that far off all the same.”

And so with this latest song, ‘I want the sun’, which has a flavour of The Stranglers in the title and within the body of the song too, along with Alice Cooper and even a Marc Bolan-like vocal toward the end (Tyrannosaurus Rex era, please).

And that riff from about a minute in. Curved Air’s ‘Back street luv’? Marvellous.

The song is, to quote Lars, (another) post-punk one about longing and waiting for something. His own crucifixion, according to the lyrics. Nice.

7/10

Little Lies (Sweden) – Roadblocks (single/possible track from forthcoming album)

Little Lies were also with us a while back, in June to be precise, with ‘Us against the world’, the title track of their EP.

They are Mikael Nordgren and Anna Maria Espinosa.

That song was a mish-mash of pop, rock and pysch and I commented on Anna Maria’s almost schoolgirl vocal and how it added to a sense of hopelessness and despair.

There are no negative emotions on display this time. ‘Roadblocks’ steamrollers along and you can’t help feeling they are shoveling coal onto the rhythm section.

NO roadblock is going to stop her getting where she’s going and to add emphasis she delivers some of the lines with the sort of power I haven’t heard from a female Swedish singer since I last witnessed Anna von Hausswolff.

One definitely for burning down the motorway to, in your Cadillac speed machine.

8/10

Dogsmile (Sweden) – Fancy Places (single/possible track from forthcoming album)

Dogsmile is a band that I’ve only reviewed once before previously mainly because, as regular readers will know, some band names simply put me off. (Pigs x7, Beans on Toast, The Lovely Eggs…I could go on.

In this case, I don’t really like dogs, they definitely don’t like me, and they only smile in my direction to conceal the fact they’re about to inject their rabid fangs into my leg. Or worse.

Only kidding, and that’s a bit unfair on Dogsmile anyway so I took a listen to their latest single. Another reason is that I was attracted to the song being a trip around Europe visiting some ‘Fancy Places’ including Hamburg (?), the French Riviera (ok, I’ll go with that) and…Brighton??!! That falls between a rock and a hard place…

At least they found a decent ‘Indian’ there.

They seem to have been influenced by The Cure at some time in the past (and there is a degree of mutual respect as well by all accounts) and you can hear that straight away and if you don’t you will when you hear the big orchestral backing. Hey, it’s just like heaven.

There are very apposite lines early on – “the train is waiting now/so let’s go/before it’s all too late”, later repeated with a little variation, so we don’t forget in this time of global tension. Robert Smith couldn’t have put it better, Just don’t get on the one going east, lads.

7.5/10

Dogsmile will release an album, ‘Temple of Songs’, later.

Find them on:

Lush Lullaby:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lushlullaby