måndag 20 januari 2025

Musikminne från New Silver Girl

Foto: Paula Suhonen 

Bandet New Silver Girl är en frisk fläkt. De bojkottar sociala medier och hoppas på att få se lyssnarna i verkligheten istället, långt bortom siffror och algoritmer. I februari släpps nya albumet Wild carnation, producerat av Gordon Raphael (Regina Spektor, The Strokes) och inspelat i legendariska studion Abbey Road. Första smakprovet från albumet släpptes i fredags. Blue room är ett kärleksbrev till fantastiska riff och en driven intensitet. En tonsatt stökig kväll, samtidigt som den är full av värme, kärlek och som sagt, intensitet. Idag gästar bandet, genom sångaren Olli Happonen, bloggen för ett musikminne, kopplat till min kära hemstad Göteborg och jag säger som Olli: God bless Gothenburg. 

One of the important turning points on the way of personal musical self-understanding happened when I was living in Turku in 2001. There was a time when only good bands came from Scandinavia and I had heard of a band called Soundtrack of Our Lives and it must have been their Sister Surround that had made a very strong impression on me. With this information, I bought a ticket to their gig, where TSOOL performed together with Silverbullit, who opened the evening. 

I didn't know anything about Silverbullit beforehand. I remember killing time over a couple of beers, predestined to accept that hardly anything interesting would happen before the gig - the background music in bars at that time was usually boring in Finland and the reality had to be re- invented in one's own imagination to make it look and sound fantastic. However, it was all different that night - the DJ unexpectedly first started playing the Velvet Underground’s Rock and Roll”- one of my all time favorite tracks - then continued with a tune from AC/DC's golden age repertoire, Rock and Roll Damnation. So the table was already set with good taste for the protagonists of the evening.

After some time Silverbullit started their set. In retrospect, I have realized that the set mainly consisted of songs from the Citizen Bird classic album. They manage to capture me completely from the first beats. It wasn't just a lucky warm-up band that had become the opener for then hyped TSOOL, but something very different: hypnotic, poetic and raw rock mixed with a Joy Division-like distancing touch. In short: just amazing. I realized that I can also live a truly mythical phase of rock culture, and not just read about it in the history books: "It's just a simple thing that you call joy”, as they say in their song. 

The evening continued with main act Soundtrack of Our Lives. At the beginning of the gig, I was still in the post-cathartic state caused by Silverbullit, until TSOOL finally blew my mind once and for all, led by Ebbot Lundberg: ”Last night I was nobody at all”, I thought, when I stopped seeking acceptance from anyone and got myself to next record store to buy TSOOL’s Behind The Music and Silverbullits Citizen Bird. God Bless Gothenburg. 

/ Olli Happonen, New Silver Girl

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