Treasury Of Puppies – Mitt Stora Nu

The band with the last good band name follow their inspiring 2020 debut with this new record for Discreet, providing yet more evidence of Gothenburg's ever-active underground and more importantly, Charlott Malmenholt and Joakim Karlsson's own creative evolution. Those lucky enough to hear it will remember their self-titled debut as an introduction to a synth-soundtracked, spooky halfworld that seemed appealingly escapist amidst the horrors of lockdown. On Mitt Stora Nu they double down on this world-building approach, whilst widening the boundaries of the city wall just a little bit more. There's a whole lot of the diaphanous synth sounds typical of that first record, though they're now bolstered by some isolated guitar interventions and an increasing number of spoken word overlays. Both Malmenholt and Karlsson share vocal duties, their native Swedish (though sometimes they also switch to English, too) a beguiling guiding narrative that literally means nothing to a non-Swedish speaker such as I, but works magnificently as both textural quality and storytelling device. Like watching a foregign language film without the subtitles, no real meaning lands, the feeling resides in the memory of the experience. Even when they strip back to basics, as on Dodens Soffa or the title track, sounding like either Peter Jefferies or Chan Marshall (or Chan Marshall covering Peter Jefferies), they still sound beamed in from another universe. Hard to find accurate comparisons for this kind of music making outside of the context of its own Gothenburg milieu: where else could this be made? So let's just consider it that and that only, Gothenburg Sound and Song.