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When a bunch of mopey Seattle musicians cranked the distortion and played songs that hybridized melancholy and rage, the world called it grunge. Everyone had an easy explanation for the movement, too--namely that the onslaught of rain and the pervasive grayness had influenced these bands' collective sound. Musical seasonal affective disorder, sure 'nuff. So how should we decipher the sunny, buoyant electro-pop of Komeda, a quartet that resides in the often dark and bitterly cold Arctic Circle city of Umeå in Sweden, a country renowned for its high suicide rate? Apparently someone forgot to give bassist Marcus Holmberg a script. "In the middle of winter, it's beautiful," he says, in measured English, of his hometown. "In the middle of fall, it's beautiful. And in the summer, it's wonderful." Though it lacks Seattle's cachet, Umeå harbors a vibrant music scene complete with its own Sub Pop, a label called North of No South that's released albums by Komeda, a Sebadoh-meets-Guided by Voices indie-rock ensemble called Carpet People, and giddy punk-pop act Ray Wonder. Holmberg explains that it's a university town with a population of 100,000, where the unfriendly climate inspires young people to hole up in basements and jam. Komeda formed in 1992 when Holmberg and a now-departed guitarist left one band to merge with Marcus' brother Jonas (a drummer) and vocalist Lena Karlsson, who'd been in another group. The quartet took its name from a Polish film composer and quickly developed an appropriately cinematic sound flavored with effervescent pop. On a debut full-length and EP, Karlsson sang in Swedish, but she switched to English and the band released The Genius of Komeda on Chicago's Minty Fresh in '96. Like Stereolab, another outfit that favored synthesizers and blended charming melodies with syncopated rhythms, the Swedes cited the free-spirited German art-rock ensemble Can as a touchstone. "A guy in a record store sold Jonas some of their albums in 1986," Holmberg says of Can. "Some of their material is pop songs, but the way they used rhythms and techniques wasn't limited. They did whatever they wanted, and that's what you should do when you play music." Add Holmberg's personal tastes to the mix and you've got something distinctively Komeda. "I'm very much into Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown," he says. "It really makes me go." Inadvertently, Holmberg's supplied the answer to the interrogative title of Komeda's just-released new album, What Makes It Go? Powered by slickly orchestrated grooves, the quartet's latest batch of songs is its brightest yet, and Karlsson's voice has grown striking and assured. Sounding like the revved-up theme to a comedic cop show, "It's Alright Baby" starts the musical ball bouncing, as Jonas' swanky keyboards lock into guitarist Mattias Norlander's zippy riffs and Karlsson punctuates each chorus line with an alluring "Woo-hoo." In "Happyment," Komeda whips up an enveloping sonic wash that suggests John Barry scoring a spaghetti Western. In a show of versatility, the quartet tosses off a lounge-like twister called "Curious," then casts a synthesized web as Karlsson encourages multifaceted living, soberly chanting "be sophisticated, be a rebel and be sexy" as the song gathers intensity and explodes into pure Swedish pop magic. The album ebbs and flows like the tide at Mont St. Michel, but the way Holmberg describes the effect, it's due to the band's improving craftsmanship rather than a reliance on superfluous chord changes. "It's simpler," he asserts. "It's not a complicated soundscape, and the songs aren't difficult. They're quite direct this time." They're also more upbeat than on previous outings, which Holmberg attributes to Komeda's thrill at simply being a band. In the break between What Makes It Go? and its predecessor, Jonas studied at a university in southern Sweden, while Marcus, Karlsson and Norlander passed the time playing in an orchestra and scoring silent films for a movie theater in Umeå. "When we got together, we just wanted it to be a joyful experience to compose a new album," he explains. "We had [only] a week to rehearse, and we didn't have many songs ready, so we just recorded ideas over and over. We felt free to construct the music as it turned out, and we wanted to make it joyful and easy." If this sounds like a simple-minded declaration, consider that Komeda is now composing dramatic music for the theater production of Can't Pay, Won't Pay, a political farce by last year's Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, an Italian anarchist playwright. "We use a string quartet, and we're working with language and words and phrases," Holmberg says of the score. "That's another reason this record felt good, to go and make these pop songs. It's something we like to do." |
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