The Neverdies – STHLM

Pop dressed as punk.

Tim: I am fairly sure you’ll like this, Tom. This Swedish band call themselves punk, which I suppose it technically is, but only in the same way that Best Song Ever is rock. Basically it’s pop, spiced up a bit.

Tom: That’s promising, certainly.

Tim: Well?

Tom: Excellent chorus. Good verses. And an excellent, almost-80s guitar-solo in the middle eight that comes much earlier than you’d expect — and complete with a rising bit at the end.

Tim: Quite why the mild dance synths are there at the beginning and the end is a mystery, as is the omission of letters from the track title, but never mind because the rest is pretty great.

Tom: It took me way too long to work out that STHLM meant “Stockholm”.

Tim: Oh, well, if we’re doing confessions, I may as well say that it took me a full eighteen months to realise that Madonna’s album MDNA was a drugs pun.

Tom: Oh good, it wasn’t just me.

Tim: This track, meanwhile, is pop dressed as punk, and on many occasions (house parties, getting ready for a Night On The Town) that really can be the best type of pop, especially when it’s done as well as it is here.

Tom: There’s one particular guitar chord in the chorus — on the ‘all’ in “just don’t care at all” — that absolutely floored me. STHLM isn’t going to become an anthem for me — it’s not quite there — but I can see it becoming one for a lot of people.

Tim: As for the video, it’s not up yet, but it’ll probably be the usual band playing enthusiastically, flashing lights in time with the music, the odd Busted Jump™, that sort of thing, interspersed with people people partying, and that’s a decent sort of video. So well done to them for that as well. Basically, well done all round. A Top Track.