I’ve always liked Norwegian band Dobbeltgjenger, but I don’t quite recollect them being quite so damn loud and rocking as they are in their latest single ‘Friends (I’m There I’m Gone’, which has become an ‘instant hit’ in my house. They’ve just finished recording their 6th album (which I can’t quite believe), the follow up to their 2025 release ‘Master of Failure’. It doesn't necessarily open in blistering style, but the way it just takes off exactly one minute in elevates

Ghosts on TV have said that “the starting point for ‘Iridescent’ might have been a need to focus a bit more on the quieter and more spacious side of our band.” I couldn’t agree more with that description. And as much as part of me would happily accept endless variations on “I Am Not Dead I Am 55 Today”, I do reluctantly accept that bands need to keep moving, exploring new corners of their sound rather than endlessly retracing old steps. That quieter, more expansive approach

We’ll finish today with a quick mention of Swedish band Kallsup, who we featured a couple of years back and have recently returned with an outstanding new song entitled ‘Kino’ (Cinema). So they’re a 6 piece band fronted by Eline Gustafsson, whose vocals again are excellent on the new track, but I just love the sound the whole band make, a swirling, melodic haze that for sure has shoegaze influences, but is far more powerful and relentlessly driven, whilst always keeping a goo

I was going to write about a lovely new(ish) track from The School Book Depository entitled ‘Rapture’ that I heard in hospital, but inevitably songwriter Fredrik Solfors managed to get a 2nd track out before I had chance, again showing how prolific he is. He describes his newest song ‘Unlearn’ as a song about ‘getting to grips with existentialism’, which I could get way too deep into right now, but instead I’ll just concentrate on the music, a soulful and heartwarming song me

We included Finnish band Drug Store Raid in our 2024 list of Favourite Albums of the year, courtesy of their ‘Background Music For Family Arguments’ release, so it’s great to see them back with new single ‘Apple Junkie Birds’. It’s another release in the post punk space that I’ve featured a lot this week, but the Helsinki 5 piece are certainly far more complex in their musical approach than Green Tea Bitches whom we featured yesterday. ‘Apple Junkie Birds’ is a riotous 2 1/2

I can’t deny that I was slightly disappointed when I finally surfaced from anaesthetic / critical care to discover that the world had, rather selfishly, carried on much as before. I’d been quietly expecting a few developments in my absence: Trump and Farage both serving lengthy prison sentences, and more importantly I assumed that Green Tea Bitches had already been confirmed as Glastonbury headliners for 2027, and that, in a diplomatic initiative aimed at securing interplanet

Writing about 7ebra got me thinking about bands in a similar genre, and it reminded me that we hadn’t heard from Danish band Kindsight in a while. The good news is that they've just released a new single after a 2 year absence (from their outstanding album ‘No Shame No Fame’), entitled ‘The Head (This Body Deserves’), Now I try and avoid quoting band / record label notes directly, but feel I must on this occasion from Bandcamp, because any attempt to simplify the following w

So what have I been missing? As always a quick look at the PNKSLM Record Label website is a pretty good start, and it seems like the excellent indie post punk pop duo 7ebra are poised to release a new album at the end of September, which is very good news indeed. From that album they've just released 'Dinner and a Movie', a nicely balanced 2 mins 30 of chunky guitars and harmonised melodies that disappear off in a direction I wasn't quite expecting. The new album is curiou

I’ll catch up on the last 3 months of enforced absence by trying to cover as many albums as possible, and Misty Coast (led by Richard Myklebust and Linn Frøkedal) are a great place to start, as their new album ‘Always Sun’ is a timeless melodic dream pop release, which is easy to get to grips with on 1st listen thanks to the melodic intent, yet complex enough instrumentally to offer months of repeat listening pleasure . It’s their 5th album and the already released singles ar

We have a couple of Tromsø artists to feature this next week, the first of whom I’ve been meaning to write about for ages. Vilde Bye is a quietly compelling voice from northern Norway, and her track ‘Bird Up a Tree’ is a lovely introduction. Now we’ve covered a few fairly heavy lyrical ideas recently, so an acoustic indie-folk song about a bird sitting in a tree really appealed to me the first time I heard it in a very busy train station a couple of weeks ago. Except of cours