I realise that the excitement of Eurovision is almost too much to bear, but there's still this hefty list of Albums and EP's to cover, this week starting with 'cult' Swedish outfit MFMB - they return with 'Sugar' after a long absence.
Maybe 'hefty' is the right word for the album too, as while it's just 9 tracks and 38 minutes in length, this feels like a weighty release, complex and certainly not in the 'file under easy listening' category - at least on 1st listen. But the MFMB songwriting process doesn't come easy, because after a 10 year hiatus since they released 'Colossus', the making of 'Sugar' was fraught with difficulties, the attempt at a democratic writing process creating friction, band splits, reformations and no attempt to sugar coat the process either.
Anyway the result is an interesting album which opens with title track 'Sugar', and it's a good way for them to open given that it's one of the more melodic and easy to digest tracks, which they describe as a song about 'the weight of existence and the deceptive allure of taking the easy way out’. The track was straight forward to write too, the band explaining "This one just kind of fell into place, all by itself. It was very early in the process of making the new album, and we thought that maybe the whole thing would be this easy.... We were very wrong"
Tracks such as 'Wanderlust' and 'My Liberator' are similarly intense, even if they lack as much melodic intent as the opener, but in 'The Torment had Begun' they head off in another direction completely, and after that the album builds with the excellent 'Harvest', and 'The Hippy Shake (To Earn your Love)' feels almost jaunty in comparison with some of the tracks.
But they save the best until last and end in stunning style, with the quite blistering 'Six-Figure Income', krautrock meets post rock, a track that has to be amongst the best I've heard this year, thundering, powerful, frightening and just so enjoyable I've listened to it at least 10x today alone.
So I can't deny this is a little heavy going in places and I don't feel MFMB are always facing in the same direction, but when they do, well they make a hell of a racket. Check out 'Sugar'.
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