Concert Fri Jun 13 2008

Where's the Ikea? (a travelogue of my trip to Sweden)

I can add up all the good promo loot I've received from music blogging on one hand. There's the Asthmatic Kitty t-shirt, the hundreds of promo cd's and the occasional sticker or button. Except for that t-shirt I could take `em or leave `em. In fact I no longer accept music cd's as a format. So when I was offered an expenses paid trip to Sweden, as a result of the Swedish indie pop music blog I write, I thought at first it was some kind of cruel joke. But now as I sit here in an apartment outside of the Hultsfred festival grounds it's all starting to sink in.

Hultsfred is Sweden's largest summer festival on par with Lollapalooza and Pitchfork. They have international headliners like Rage Against The Machine and Babyshambles, but I'm primarily here to see the Swedish acts. However at 2:30 am on Saturday the Chicago hip hop group The Cool Kids play. I've promised my editor here that I'll cover that but let me just repeat that start time - 2:30 AM!! We'll have to see about that.

So far we've been treated like royalty (or "starbloggers" as Swedish National TV called us in this interview) with a nice two day stay in Stockholm and now a three day trip to Hultsfred. My first two impressions about Sweden were the amazing number of babies - turns out they're in the middle of a baby boom and just the amount of greenery that covers the land just minutes outside of Stockholm. It's a beautiful country.

On to the music. One of the best (small, undiscovered) Swedish bands I've seen so far has been Little Marbles. as I've written elsewhere they somehow bring together elements of MIA, Mystere De Voix Bulgare and the best of Swedish twee. They're an unbelievably young duo from Gothenburg. Here's there single from their just released debut EP.

[mp3] Little Marbles - Melon

Oh and p.s. they've never heard of Ann Sather's over here.

More from Sweden soon...

-Craig Bonnell

— Anne Holub / Comments (0)