This Heel - ‘Rock the World’ (EP)

There are few things I appreciate more at NMR than a band whose ambition wildly exceeds any reasonable scale, so naturally I was delighted to see that This Heel have returned with a new EP boldly titled ‘Rock the World’, which to me sounds like a 90s charity stadium concert. But who needs the likes of Live Aid, really, when a determined Swede with a basement full of pedals can do the job in nine minutes flat? Freddie Mercury had Wembley; Martin Månsson Sjöstrand has a practice amp, a notebook full of totally incomprehensible lyrical fragments (see previous NMR features 2018–2024), and critically, absolutely no sense of proportion. It’s all very NMR.

On this occasion he’s not joined by any space monkey compatriots, and has decided to perform all instruments himself. Apparently (and regular readers will know how we define this word) this is largely due to his cat Pau being so terrified of drummers that he hisses menacingly at anyone approaching a hi-hat until they flee the premises.

Musically, Rock the World is classic This Heel: noisy, tuneful, slightly lopsided, and always catchy. “Happy Accidents” fires things off with scrappy, sprint-paced power pop. “Stop the Flow” is more chaotic, bouncing between riffs and lyrical clues that probably lead nowhere but are still fun to follow. It feels like a relentless march, and in fact I’ve discovered it’s the perfect speed to stride purposefully across town to work whilst listening to. Meanwhile the title track and standout, "Rock the World" manages to be both triumphant and faintly ridiculous, which is exactly the balance This Heel does best, and it all concludes with the fleeting and far too short ‘Herbie and KITT’.

I guess, however, as a ‘credible’ music review website we should answer the critical question: does this EP actually ‘rock the world’? Officially, well no, but that’s largely because we’ve received a two-year cease and desist order from the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency from making such claims after we suggested that the intense climax of an Oh Hiroshima track may have been responsible for an electricity blackout in Leksand.

But This Heel certainly jolt their own warped pocket of the universe, and if the broader world remains stubbornly un-rocked, well… maybe that’s its own problem.