Tuesday, February 22, 2005
How Not Swede It Is
I'm an ass for not mentioning sooner that The Pillcrushers and Motel Creeps, two very different bands, totally nailed it Friday at Luna Lounge. The 'crushers, whose upbeat power-pop tunes burst with melodies that would be right at home in Aimee Mann or Liz Phair songs, knocked it out of the park with a set culled mostly from their new album Welcome To The World, closing with a cover of a Paybacks song.
A little later in the night, Motel Creeps (no relation to Martha Davis or Radiohead's first hit) had the club's mostly-full back room digging the '90s Brit/Stone Roses/Echo & The Bunnymen type vibes. Maybe it was the hair, but lead singer Greg Welch was both looking and sounding like Jim Morrison's great nephew. Good stuff.
In a completely unrelated side note, so far I have made two factual corrections to my Best Of 2004 piece, both involving cases of mistaken Swedishness. One is that the wonderful Annie is from Norway. I think I sort of knew this but had forgotten about it. She reminded me so much of Waltz For Debbie that I must have convinced myself over time that she had to be from the same country.
The other is that The Wildhearts are from London. This I was just plain wrong about. I always lumped the 'hearts in with The Hellacopters, Backyard Babies, and other Swedish punk rockers of similar ilk. I guess I have such a thing for the Swedes that I unconsciously ascribe Swedish origins to anyone cool who could plausibly be from there. Rest assured, it's a compliment.
