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Avg: 4.0 (126 ratings)
- Date Released: April 18, 2000
- Genre: Alternative/Punk
- Style: Indie Rock
- Label: Shrimper / Revolver
Short stories rendered to tape via a guitar and a boom-box.
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We Say...
To listen to the Mountain Goats' 1995 album Sweden is to tour a domestic landscape with capsicum pepper trees in the backyard and bubbling tubs of sour mash in the basement, and to venture through locales as exotic as Bolivia, Seoul and Queens, but never escape a disintegrating relationship vividly real and stringently unromanticized, conjured in the most plain-spoken, dead-on language.
Taped direct-to-boombox, lo-fi is not even the word for this recording, but who cares: Darnielle brings it all back home in no uncertain terms on album closer, “Cold Milk Bottle.” After all is said and done, he proclaims, loudly, "Despite your random acts of violence/ I feel all right/ Despite the force of your fury/ I feel all right." It's not even clear who he's addressing: a lover, a friend, a relative, fate, or God. Doesn't matter. The kicker is when he goes straight into a poignant quotation of the jazz standard "Mean to Me": "You're mean to me/ Why must you be mean to me/ You shouldn't forget, you see/ What you mean to me." He will never know the answer, and yet it's so abundantly clear that he will soldier on.
How one man with a nasal, nerdy voice and an out-of-tune acoustic guitar can summon up such heroic defiance is one of the great miracles of music. It's one of the most epic two minutes I've ever heard. -
They Say...
This is classic Mountain Goats: songs about broken (or soon to be broken) relationships, food, and flora rendered in vivid detail and recorded straight to boom box. Atop characteristically ragged and percussive guitar playing, John Darnielle works wonders of condensation, creating lively, complex characters in less than three minutes. Despite the flag on the cover and hilarious liner notes about the "Swede conspiracy," this isn't a concept album about the homeland of Ace of Base and ABBA, nor are there any covers of those two Darnielle favorites. There is, however, perhaps the best cover of Steely Dan's "FM" imaginable. No Alpha songs here either, but two more in the "Going to" series -- "Going to Queens" and "Going to Bolivia" -- and the outstanding "Tahitian Ambrosia Maker," which is something of a mix between Gilligan's Island and Heart of Darkness (beginning, "We were real hungry, half dead, when you broke out a half a loaf of sourdough bread, and in the tropical air the scent rose like a spirit"), make Sweden among the best of the early releases from the Mountain Goats. Zopilote Machine is maybe more consistent, but 1995's Sweden sets a high-water mark not surpassed until The Coroner's Gambit in 2000.
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| 01. |  |
The Recognition Scene |
2:50 |
|
| 02. | |
Downtown Seoul |
2:53 |
|
| 03. | |
Some Swedish Trees |
2:05 |
|
| 04. | |
I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone |
2:35 |
|
| 05. | |
Deianara Crush |
1:53 |
|
| 06. | |
Whole Wide World |
2:13 |
|
| 07. | |
Flashing Lights |
2:30 |
|
| 08. | |
Sept 16 Triple X Love! Love! |
2:24 |
|
| 09. | |
Going To Queens |
2:26 |
|
| 10. | |
Tahitian Ambrosia Maker |
1:47 |
|
| 11. | |
Going To Bolivia |
1:37 |
|
| 12. | |
Tollund Man |
2:34 |
|
| 13. | |
California Song |
1:55 |
|
| 14. | |
Snow Crush Killing Song |
2:46 |
|
| 15. | |
Send Me An Angel |
1:47 |
|
| 16. | |
Neon Orange Glimmer Song |
3:08 |
|
| 17. | |
FM |
1:45 |
|
| 18. | |
Prana Ferox |
4:05 |
|
| 19. | |
Cold Milk Bottle |
2:06 |
|
19 Total Tracks, 45:19 Total Length
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