Aural Fixations

THE ACKERMANS
"Song In Your Street" + "Sweet Goodbye"
(Inpediente)
EBON TALE
"Sit Down" + "This 6 Year Old Feeling"
(Dusklight)
ENEMIES SWE
"Enemy" + "Is It My Body"
(Plug or Die)
TOBIAS FRÖBERG
"So I" + "The Rain (demo version)"
(Silence)
Despite its frigid climate, Sweden has one of the hottest, most fecund music industries in the world right now. It seems like you can't swing a Hardanger fiddle without smacking yet another new artist from the Nordic climes. It's difficult to keep with it all (though the brave souls at …It's a Trap! are trying, bless 'em) and even more difficult to sample these bands outside of the usual mp3 snippets. Fortunately, some Swedish record companies are reviving the lost art of the single, joining the thousands of indie rockers in other countries who view the format not as a way to get top 40 airplay, but as an introduction, a hearty "Hi there!" in whatever language they speak. The format may be CD instead of 45, but the spirit is the same.

The Ackermans, who hail from the Stockholm suburb of Ängby, are a quintet of five young men who've been together since junior high school. Working in a vein not unlike the great Detroit band the High Strung (or their own countrymen the Venue, for that matter), the sprouts bounce off the walls with a pair of rough-hewn power pop gems. "Song In Your Street" is sugary pop performed with a garage punk attitude, while "Sweet Goodbye" flips the equation over. Very nice; I wouldn't mind hearing more of this. Also hailing from a Stockholm suburb (Tyresö), Ebon Tale is angrier and noisier on "Sit Down," the followup to its debut EP Blanket Skies. The trio doesn't leave melody behind by any means, but "Sit Down" revels in distortion (especially on singer Frida Franzén's voice) and a sense of impending chaos as much as hooks. "This 6 Year Old Feeling" is a lengthy but compelling instrumental that builds tension through riff repetition instead of empty soloing; it's the kind of epic track the band wouldn't have gotten away with if it had been released as the B-side of a vinyl single.

The oddly-named Enemies Swe (I guess there was already a band somewhere in the world called the Enemies) eschew any kind of aspirations to art and stick with straightforward, hard-edged rock & roll. The hooky, nasty "Enemy" indicates that the Backyard Babies have had an enormous impact on Swedish hard rock, which is fine with me, if the results are this exhilarating. The cover of Alice Cooper's "Is It My Body" spotlights a clear influence, but simply isn't as strong as the band's self-penned cut. Speaking of self-penned, Tobias Fröberg is the latest singer/songwriter to emerge from the frozen north. Taken from his forthcoming Silence Records debut, "So I" is a gorgeous slice of heartfelt folk pop, with lovelorn lyrics, fluid fingerpicking, tasteful production and a sweetly affecting vocal. Imagine a dream collaboration of Nick Drake with Simon & Garfunkel and you're in the same snow bank. The demo of "The Rain" is starker, just Fröberg and a gently echoing piano, and despite the melody's passing resemblance to "The Rose," it's also a fine song and wonderful performance. All of these artists make me want to hear full-length recordings of their music, but Fröberg in particular has great potential. Michael Toland