'I feel the need, the need to hear a Swede...'
Do you? Well you're too late. The Swedish night at the ICA has now been and gone, and a friendly jovial affair it was too. However, as is usually the case with my blog, you will find a positive to counteract any disappointment through absence and I am going to tell you all about it, and even let you know about the guys who frequently put on Swedish themed events, the guys of Tack!Tack!Tack! This way you really won't feel you missed so much, and for future gigs, you might actually get to the church on time. Amen.
So I started off the evening with my faithful co-pilot Flossie of the music department, discussing heavily the music business, important trends and culture et al. OK, well actually I remember it being slightly less honorable than that, more a festival chat, which ones? where to go? I wish at this stage this blog had a forum capacity, and I could put up some kind of 'Festival Fight- Who is our champion?' I would ask all readers to send in their top three festivals and then a sort of online debate could take place between the 10 most favored, slowly going through the quarter's/semi's until the final would be reached; a festival winner would be crowned and a ticket given away... But alas, we are not quite there yet, but please do feel free to send in your festival opinions to my email address torie@speyerdesign.com. I may well write some form of festival article one of these days, and generally new opinions are always good to hear.
So where was I? Flossie and I, ICA bar, Thursday 24th May, 2007, soaking up the start of the Swedish evening. I spent a large amount of time trying to catch Flossie on camera, and although she's a very adept swimmer this one, I did get this picture, which is yes, funny, but rather cool too. I'm hoping she agrees....
Slowly the bar filled up, with more and more people... Hiding by the stairs we had the lovely Maj and Stewart,
I have to throw in this pic of Kris and Howard just for their description of Loney Dear as 'A low-fi Beegees' I mean that surely got lifted my level of inquisitiveness!
I spoke to these two brothers, Sean and Brian,
who found it very funny. Sean had come with his wife Madeleine, introduced originally to him by Brian. Something told me Brian was happy to have the favor returned to him on Thursday, and was happily meeting other Swedish beauties through Madeleine, including Mia.
Something in her expression tells me she was exasperated by the chat up lines I can bet she was bombarded with that evening! Any Swedish girls going to a night where it's all about Sweden, you better watch out.. Even our first support act couldn't quite escape her Swedishness (I know, not a word, but you get where I'm going) being a focal point of introduction.. 'See her once, and her cutesy charm will be sure to win you over - Maia is strikingly beautiful in voice and vision' Now tell me this, is that really all about the music?!
Well now, so as not to appear prudish or jealous, I will affirm that Maia was in fact very beautiful,
and her music wasn't half bad either.. She was very confident, smiley,
charming indeed, 
and I enjoyed her various human percussive noises; little exclamations of 'huh' 'hey' which got me involved anyway. While the technical guys were frosting on an Icelandic tip suggesting maybe there wasn't enough of something from Maia to top her number one competition Bjork, I felt this was a little unfair. I mea, if no band had attempted another indie sound in Britain after bands like the Stone Roses and The Smiths were rocking around, then we would not have had a multitude of variants and original there-afters including Radiohead, Artic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand.. I know, I know, you cannot even categorize such varied bands in this extremely loosely over- used genre/descriptive term anyway, but you get what I mean. Just because a country came up with somethings that works, does not mean good things can't follow it. And ultimately, Maia may be no Bjork, but I don't think we should undermine her originality by suggesting that she wants to be?! And the songs she sang, while maybe not ground breaking or mind blowing, were very intimate; you could identify with her and the lyrics, and there will always be a place in music for people trying new sounds and putting themselves in their music. Maia sang about simple things like friends she admires back home, people she has met, lovers she has loved and lost etc.
For more details on Maia and her other band Hello Saferide check out the following links..
http://www.myspace.com/maiahirasawa
http://www.razziarecords.se/ (label)
http://www.maiahirasawa.com/
http://www.hellosaferide.com
Next up were the Shout Out Louds, clearly the band that many folk had come down for, and they didn't fail to impress. Normally, I get a chance to chat with the bands backstage but this evening we had Maia stuck in some horrible travel nightmares and arriving just in time for the gig, (which I might add made her set the more impressive..I know how wiggy I get after too many hours of changing trains, planes and automobiles)and the Shout Out Louds were being swept around by an official photographer taking them outside the ICA for photo - shoots around the City. (This may have been to do with the fact that they are now signed to the major label Merge Records and it was the bands only exclusive London headline show in two years.) Anyway, all this action resulted in no backstage interviews for Torie, but I do rather like this picture I caught literally 'behind' the scenes of the band at the back entrance of the ICA.
Rather special I thought...
And I was able to catch a few good ones of the band on stage too.
Adam with Ted
Bebban on keyboards and backing vocals,
and with her harmonica,
I enjoyed the music, the crowd went crazy for Tonight I Have to Leave It from their new album and their myspace page. One of my favourites was a little number called 'Are You Coming Out Tonight'. I appreicated their musicality, their adeptness at easily rolling from one song into another and they were all very much on the same page as a band. I personally would have liked a few more elements to set them apart from the rest - their dress, attitude and lyrics were not originality personified and I have to say I found myself forgetting the name 'Shout Out Louds' until it had been re-iterated to me a few times, because somehow it just sounded rather like something else, the 'yeah yeah yeah's or something with that 3 syllable roll 'pa -pa- pa' anyway. But, overall an enthusiastic and energetic set that the fans enjoyed immensely. Check out all news and info on www.myspace.com/shoutoutlouds
I felt sad that the whole crowd didn't stay for the final act but Loney Dear a.k.a
Emil Svanängen,
because this 'multi-instrumentalist from Stockholm' did manage 'to create a noise that (was) really rather lovely'. 'Exhilarating and melancholy, joyous and confessional all at once', he was! Loney was extremely appreciative to those who stayed and the lesser group amounted to a feeling of intimacy quite apt for what is a very personal and attention-commanding music. Emil was able to command the attention of everyone in the hall for strong silences and for areas where the instrumentals would slowly build before breaking for a lyrical and exclamatory sound from the singer himself. Loney is a captivating artist and you can tell he's the man pulling the strings, commanding his fellow band members 
on his musical journey being shared with the audience. From my point of view listening to Loney in a public place, trying to remember sounds and visuals while simultaneously taking photographs made it hard for me to go a place that I think, given half a chance in the privacy of my bedroom, or just in quiet, could be some pretty soul and heart ripping places... 
Throughout the evening in the bar area the audience were treated to the less weighted, entertaining sounds of the Swedish and Estonian DJ's Daniel of Off the Wall www.myspace.com/thisisoffthewall
and Andres Lokko.
They focused on playing mainly Swedish music, which Andres pointed out to me was not a hard job with so much excellent acid house and pop music coming from that country at the moment. When asked who he felt was most admirable at the moment he suggested 'The Concretes' who I've since checked out and will admit have a groovy little indie pop sound - a sort of upbeat sound similar to Au Revoir Simone who visited us not long ago from Brooklyn. I think Andres may have been bias since I then heard from a little bird that the 'pretty girl' Andres mentioned from the band is actually his girlfriend.. but forgive my gossip spreading, or don't, naughty me! Ultimately, Daniel and Andres played some lovely tunes and pointed out to me Jason, the other person I promised I would tell you about at the beginning of my blog - the part promoter of the evening and man behind the Tack!Tack!Tack! events that have teamed up with the Swedish Institute. I could talk about T!T!T! in more detail in my own words, but when there is an article so apt to do the job, http://www.londonist.com/archives/2007/05/clubwatch_tack.php, I think you should just grab a look yourselves. This is an interview with Jason and Nick who run the nights, choosing different and wonderful Swedish line up's like that of thursday night. Thank you Jason and Nick.For future gigs look here, http://www.myspace.com/tacktacktackAnd that as they say, is all folks. For another take on the evening, check this out
http://swedesplease.blogspot.com/2007/05/tack-tack-tack.html Or just wait for me, I'll be back shortly with all that was the wonder of The Crystal Vision evening on Saturday. Lots of mad music and art and all the rest. x
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