He’s a fascinating character is Sweden’s Thomas Di Leva, or just plain Di Leva as he prefers to be known. Something of a polymath, he’s won the Swedish Grammy as Best Artist of the Year, making multiple TV-show appearances, concert tours and theatre plays, including playing ‘Hamlet’ in an acclaimed performance of the Shakespearean epic and David Bowie in a tribute show – ‘Changes’ - about his life and times. He’s come to be regarded as the Swedish Bowie. He was supposed to be touring that show around Sweden for a third time right now but obviously can’t.
His last two singles have been ‘Men in Black’, an unusual 1950’s-style song written for the ‘Storm Area 51’ event in Nevada, USA last year, where he premiered it, then ‘If You Believe’, not a Cher cover but a song that deals with life after death rather than after love but equally which promises "If you believe, you will see that love can't die", according to Di Leva.
Those two songs marked a change of direction for Di Leva, who now feels the urge to reach out globally with his unique visions and music. But with his latest release he’s come back down to Earth a little with a piece of work that references the current global pandemic, presented as a catchy sing-a-long pop song capturing the feeling of sorrow, tragedy, despair and isolation in this unprecedented crisis.
He says, “My wish is for the song to reach out globally as an inspiration and universal prayer for everyone in these hard times.”
Unusually for Di Leva I don’t think he quite caught the mood this time, and he usually does. The choruses are certainly upbeat, with their appeal to a Second Coming to sort this mess out but there’s something a little depressing about the verses (“a new corona on the sun, a panic has begun...) Wo-ah! However, what must be weighed against that are the wonderful jangly piano chords that support those verses. It sounds very much like those that accompany Arcade Fire’s ‘Rebellion Lies’ and I have no complaint whatsoever about that. Had ‘Mother Mary’ had a similarly grand ending that would have been just dandy.
'Mother Mary' was released today. Visit him on Facebook.