Jørn & Ole Johannes Åleskjær & The Marine Lights
Winter Song (Setskog Skøytefestival Theme Song)
Perfect Pop

Time to lace up the skates! Now the winter finally has come!! We've heard about rain dances earlier. This has to be a song to make ice and snow!!! After a wet and mild winter for nearly two months, winter finally arrived in southern Norway in due time for the launch of this new song. The Åleskjær brothers (vocals, keyboards and guitars) of The Loch Ness Mouse have reunited and teamed up with Fred Strand (Lionheart Brothers, I Was A King) on drums and Håvard Krogedal (Mirror Lakes, I Was A King) bass, the latter two calling themselves The Marine Light.

This is the theme song for a skating festival next moonth on a frozen lake of the Åleskjær brothers' native Høland (Heyland) that we learned about on The Loch Ness Mouse's debut album Flair For Darjeeling all those years ago (1999). In the email I received from them, they said they had returned to Perfect Pop for the occasion and also returned to the jangle. Well, the brothers and the Lights certainly master the art of ice skating better than me. While skating, I tend to lose my balance now and again and would've preferred this song to be even more jangly. But compared to the mouse's last album New Graffiti, for me it certainly is a step back in the right direction. Smooth, clean elegant and polished pop. After listening intensively to distorted Velvet Underground recordings for some days, "Winter Song" certainly was a blessing to my weary ears. And it's the perfect soundtrack for cold and snowy winter days, no matter if you master the noble art of ice skating or not. The song is so far available on iTunes, Spotify and Wimp. Let's hope for a physical format, too, before spring melts the ice.

Copyright © 2014 JP