David Josephson – Lögner om Berlin
The real artistic geniuses are really appreciated when they are at their best, and even less so by co-inhabitants of their home town. Writing about just a fantastic home is about the romance of the streets that you’ve walked on a million times, is something that, for the most part, only The Beach Boys and pub bands tend to do.
And, as it turns out, once you investigate pop-rock history a little closer, you’ll realise that as far as most artists are concerned, there are only a few cities worth getting lost in, exploring, or taking the stories back and helping them land inside of a song. Of these places, Berlin is certainly the Gilded Palace of Sin, the bohemian capital of Europe. And, from Bowie to U2 to modern dark wave bands, many artists are willing to pay however much housing costs in the German capital nowadays to access that magic.
The fact that Stockholm, or another two or three Nordic cities, are other fabled centres of modern creativity, and are to some as appealing as Berlin, is irrelevant to David Josephson. The Swedish artist, a big fan of poet-singers like Leonard Cohen, has needed to seek inspiration on dark, winding streets that are far removed from the ones near home. That’s why “Lögner om Berlin” is created to sound like the work of a shipwrecked prophet who spent years of their lives working on a way to return home. This is music for people who need love, loss, and conflict to light the spark of their creative work, and who’d even go to modern Berlin to find it, something that experienced tourists no longer take a chance on anymore.
Rocket Bike – Scene from a movie
I’ll let you in on a painful secret. There’s a reason why there are so many stories in print about some of your favourite rock stars. There’s a simple reason why, for example, there are so many anecdotes about Lou Reed’s personal life that all seem to happen after the mid-1970s.
That reason is that, oftentimes, it is the stories that sell the record. Sometimes, if the music is not compelling enough, or if the rock star, regardless of their previous achievements, can’t quite deliver work at the standard that audiences might have been used to, they need to rely on stories.
This pop-rock world is ruthless! When all of the stories have been told, the only people who are left standing are the ones who can write and perform at a world-class level. Rocket Bike, with the band’s friendly, understated sound, aims to create music that lives up to that standard.
Rocket Bike’s “Scene from a movie” isn’t artsy or confrontational. No, it deserves your attention simply because of the fact that it sounds better than most of the band’s contemporaries. The singing is great here, and the lyrics used in the verse find a secret groove that makes you happy for the existence of musical artists who would work hard enough to uncover this kind of ability.
