So I’ve got this Nordicvision ‘smackdown’ (to keep David’s theme going from yesterday) thing going on between Sweden and Finland for my Single of the Week, The Stillwalkers vs The School Book Depository. Of course it’s impossible to choose, I love both songs, but this new track from TSBD is of such high quality that I think it just about takes the title - at least on first listen, those Stillwalkers songs always keep growing on me.
Anyway it’s the latest song off the forthcoming School Book Depository album, which I still don’t think we have a date for, but at this rate will end up as a double album – and I’m really not going to object if that’s the case.
I’ve always had the highest regard for Fredrik Solfors songwriting, but the interesting thing is that he’s clearly still ‘developing’, and ‘Lost’ is the most mature song yet. Once again it features Helena Lindsten on ‘guest’ vocals (she also featured on the excellent ‘Sunny Disposition’), and she just has such a expressive and distinct voice that it’s also adding something different to the tracks – sometimes I feel it could be a separate project completely, but musically it’s still in the same style I guess.
As always with his songs, there’s a tale behind them, this one telling the story of a long lost childhood friend who had the most wonderful father who sadly passed away and then himself disappeared off the radar for years. After writing the song Fredrik made a final attempt to track him down, and he’d turned up on ‘google’, so there was a happy ending of sorts.
Ironic in a way also, because every time I write about the School Book Depository I inadvertently google them to check some minor factual point forgetting there’s another School Book Depository that tends to take up rather more space on the search engine. And yes I know the thought of me ‘fact checking’ anything sounds pretty far fetched.
Lovely song this, a mix of sadness and euphoria, rich in the instrumentals and fluid in the writing, it has already reached the final of a Swedish songwriting competition. And there’s a video too, with Helena Lindsten looking cool in her Sonic Youth T-shirt – hopefully we’ll get to feature her in other projects sometime.
Sometimes I sit here and wonder exactly why I put all these hours into this NMR thing. The School Book Depository and The Stillwalkers are the reason.
And read about that Stillwalkers track here.