Laleh – Bara få va mig själv

“If she’s going to bring us chorus lines like that, I’m very much in favour”

Tim: In this song, Laleh was us to let her “just be myself”, so let’s have a listen.

Tom: Subtitles! The video has English subtitles! That’s a lovely touch. Well done whoever put that together. Anyway: yes, “just be myself”.

Tim: Truth is, if she’s going to bring us chorus lines like that, I’m very much in favour of doing that.

Tom: Wait, really? This is too slow, too plodding for my tastes.

Tim: Maybe in parts – the verses aren’t always entirely to my taste, as the vocal can get a bit grating for me – but the pre-chorus and chorus are so good that I can entirely and absolutely forgive that. Instrumentation is also very nicely put together – 2nd/4th beat claps can be a bit risky and horribly repetitive, but here they’re used very well indeed.

Tom: It just leaves me cold, alas. I think it’s actually the fault of the melody — or, rather, my brain for just not liking it.

Tim: Well, personally, all in all I’ve few complaints about this. Nice one.

Laleh – Tusen Bitar

“Cheerful.”

Tim: There’s a Swedish film out; it’s called Tusen Bitar, much like this song from its soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-1t1qfRLWM

Tim: It’s a cover of a song from a few years back, but is substantially more cheerful, and I like that a lot.

Tom: Agreed: without that cheerful tone, this song could easily turn into a dirge.

Tim: The title means Thousand Pieces, and as for the rest of the lyrics I’m having a little trouble parsing what Google’s spitting out, but never mind – basically, it’s a fun track to listen to which has been given a rather happy makeover. So who’s complaining?

Tom: Well, me, but only slightly. There’s a lot of potential for a Big Rousing Outro here, and I don’t think it ever quite reaches the potential it’s got.

Tim: It’s lovely, especially with those strings all over the place. Reminiscent of Call Me Maybe at the start, actually, though that’s probably not what she’s going for. Oh well.

Laleh – Stars Align

“It departs from the pop formula just enough to be new and interesting.”

Tim: We haven’t featured Laleh for a while, which is a bit of a shame because her last single, Colors, was really very good. But here’s the second single off her album of that name, and fortunately it too is really very good.

Tom: I wouldn’t go as far as “very good” — that wha-hoo in the chorus doesn’t work for me, and the transition back to the verse really grates — but it’s certainly putting a decent effort in. It departs from the pop formula just enough to be new and interesting.

Tim: Hmm. I actually have no problem with either of the issues you mentioned, although I will say that I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the lyrics, what with “walking in the town like a ghost” being significantly different from “the world that I’m so much a part of”; on the other hand I suppose stars aligning is a good thing? Sounds a bit like horoscopey guff, but using it is fine by me if you’re going to produce a tune like this from it. It’s brilliant – almost a cross between the drums of Emmelie de Forest and heading towards the vocals of Icona Pop, combined to form wonderful results.

Tom: That’s a good analogy, particularly in that middle eight.

Tim: Video’s good, too, especially the blend thing when she talks about walking like a wolf, although that does bring back the heavy disappointment that arrives whenever I realise I’ll probably never be a werewolf. Oh well.

Laleh – Vårens Förster Dag

Let’s watch some kids have fun

Tim: Was there ever an internet meme called ‘Mystic Pony’, or something similar? Because the first three shots of this brought that straight to my mind and it seems a bit odd.

Tom: Charlie the Unicorn? Can’t stand it myself, but that seems the obvious connection. Or Robot Unicorn Attack, which is in the running for “best Flash game ever made”.

Tim: No, neither of them. Oh well, let’s watch some kids have fun on ‘Spring’s First Day’, as the title translates to.

Tim: Right, so once I’d got mystic ponies out of my head that rolling guitar bit came in and I suddenly got excited because it brought a wonderful sensation of ‘something brilliant will soon happen’. And bloody hell, yes it did.

Tom: I’ll agree with that: it’s a fun song, and by the time the second or third chorus rolled around I found myself tapping my foot along. It’s happy and positive and lovely, even if I don’t understand the lyrics.

Tim: Also, and I know you’re a grumpy bastard who doesn’t like kids’ choirs and stuff, but surely even you can’t deny that this video is just utterly lovely. Kids running wild in the woods, dressed up in costumes, with one playing a french horn that is at least 50% too big for him to be able to sensibly handle – it’s all wonderful.

Tom: The song’s lovely. The video… well, the singer’s nice, but the rest just left me a bit cold. But I’m willing to accept that’s a shortcoming of my own brain.

Tim: Could it end at the quiet bit around 3:30 with no-one complaining? Yes. But does the extra minute seem like it’s dragging on? No, not at all. Because this song is, like I said, LOVELY. It’s puts me in the same mindset as the video for Magic did, and that’s high praise indeed.

Laleh – Some Die Young

Well, isn’t that a chirpy little number.

Tom: Our regular reader Roger sends this in. And I warn you in advance: it’s a bit cinematic.

Tim: Well, isn’t that a chirpy little number.

Tom: This sounds like the music you get over the closing credits of a Disney movie.

Tim: …because you’ve watched the alternative cut of Aladdin where the magic carpet catches fire and they die in a massive carpet crash?

Tom: I would watch that, actually. Besides, Disney-sound isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but for some reason it also disqualifies it in my head as a “proper” pop song. It’s like Elton John’s “Written in the Stars” – a beautiful track, but originally made for his musical version of Aida, and therefore it gets filed under ‘musicals’ rather than ‘pop’. Perhaps I’m getting caught up in semantics.

Tim: A little bit. And somewhat missing the fact that it’s ALL ABOUT DEATH. Admittedly, only so as to convey the idea that we should be living as much as we can, but it’s still ALL ABOUT DEATH.

Tom: It’s all very pleasant, though, despite the lyrics being a bit morbid when you actually start to listen to them.

Tim: Oh, you think?