Julia Bergwall – Open Your Eyes

“New synthy dance slightly country-ish pop off Sweden.”

Tim: New synthy dance slightly country-ish pop off Sweden.

Tom: That is a lot of adjectives there.

Tim: From an artist we’ve not featured before but has nonetheless been going a fair while. Have a listen, see what you think.

Tom: Huh. There’s a lot of different parts to this track, and they’re all quite different.

Tim: A part of me was almost relieved by that, because so often we get tracks, particularly with the synthy chorus genre, with a perfectly decent opening verse and first chorus, but which then drop down into utterly unsatisfying post-choruses. Fortunately, that is entirely not the case here.

Tom: I think they’re all solid as individual parts. I’ve no idea how they work together at all, but… they do.

Tim: It is a fair old hodgepodge, with no particular dedication to one single genre – almost surprisingly, though, that works well enough throughout the whole song. A less competent producer might have sought to just chuck everything – light guitar, heavy synth, big drum beats – all in together for the closing section, sod how it came out sounding as long as it was suitably big and banging.

Tom: I mean, sometimes, that does work. Not usually, but I can see the temptation.

Tim: Fortunately, that’s not the case here at all, and in fact it sounds good throughout, no mean feat given these building blocks.