Loosegoats
For Sale By Owner
Startracks

They have listened a lot to Pavement, Sugar, Dinosaur Jr and Sebadoh, these guys from Lund (small university-town in the south of Sweden). They have listened so much, that they actually manage to copy them into something at least as good as the originals. 15 great, catchy tunes, which would fit nicely as background music to any slacker-fashion program shown on TV, are packed together on their latest release, For Sale By Owner.

They are very America-influenced. To name a few examples, one could argue about why 4 guys from Sweden play songs such as Highschool - Vietnam, name their first EP Small Lesbian Baseballplayers (no one plays baseball in Sweden), and have a picture of an American highway on the cover of the album reviewed here. Except for the Scandinavian names of the members and the text saying that the album is recorded in Sweden, nothing else indicates that this is not an American band (maybe that is good, I don't know). Perhaps it is because the singer Christian Kjellvander spent 9 years of his life living in Seattle and because of all the great music coming from over there that clearly has influenced the band.

And, why complain about details like that? This is a great rock album and it would be even if it was from Timbuktu!

Copyright © 1997 Erik Starck