On “SÃ¥ Underbart Va Livet”, their first new material of 2019, the Swedish duo Club 8 continue with softly ambient melodies similar to what they gave us on their previous LP, Golden Island (2018).
The compilation is very well-rounded. The tagline dubs it “An International Garage Band Compilationâ€, which is quite suiting as the bands included span the continents.
This isn’t a single to blast loudly. This isn’t a song for the outdoors. It’s one to play on an overcast fall day, much like today. In a place like here, a small town in NW Washington where the wind blows heavy and rain streams down icy and cold. It’s solitary, isolated. Alone.
These connections we make can be easy in today’s world (especially if you land more on the middle-ground ambivert end of introversion, as I do), but knowing and understanding ourselves may very well be the greatest challenge of all.
Gardiner’s style of writing is sometimes witty, filled with a wondrous humor, a lonely sadness, a fond goodbye. Creative and astute, unabashed at the blatantness of failure, of broken dreams, at one moment there’s an inside joke about an oddball frequent customer (Anacortes is filled with them) followed by a painful memory of crying in desperation in an empty, vacant shop.
It was the beginning of a self-inflicted dive down a rabbit hole of self-exploration and personal analysis. End goal: greater self-awareness. Never have I had such a potently powerful musical experience!
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