We wrote about Swedish songwriter TOVE just as things were starting to get pretty bad in April last year. At the time she’d just released an EP entitled ‘Made Up Gold’ which had received pretty good coverage on indie music websites across the globe, and although it didn’t necessarily have a ‘hit single’ on it, I was drawn to the dreamy warmth of her songs, a natural sounding ‘indie kid’ type probably born with a guitar in hand.
Just to prove what a lovely, cool person she is, TOVE relocated from Sweden to Romania to look after stray dogs, and she describes her music as psychedelic indie rock / folk, which is probably about right.
Anyway the good news is that she’s back already with a new track released yesterday. Entitled ‘As Per Usual’ it's inspired she says, by her teenage brother and the situation of ‘being called out for shit things you did, but instead of taking responsibility, you put gas on the flames and build up an argument about it.’ Although as she admits, she probably did the same. And I probably did too.
It’s a nice idea for a track, and musically it’s very much in her style, starting off at a gentle pace, with a lilting melody that meanders along attractively, and the guitar and bass accompaniment very much in the background. But then just over half way through the track crescendos and increases in tempo, and Tove repeats the lyrical line ‘starting a war to end a war’ over and over. It’s a nicely written song.
Take a listen here.