Ghost Of Love
Ola Frick and Carina Johansson are the Swedish duo Moonbabies. Their 2004 album The Orange Billboard was easily one of my fave records of that year. I loved it's mix of electronica and shoegaze-y rock and sunny, psychedelic pop. The two of them harmonize beautifully, and the songs ranged from full on raging to blissful space outs. It reminded me of Folk Implosion and Sparklehorse and My Bloody Valentine, and even a bit of the melancholic power pop of bands like Snow Patrol. In July of 2005 they released a mini LP called War On Sound, a stop gap release to tide us over until the next album is done. I only just got my hands on a copy of it last week. The title track is a real gem, picking up where they left off and then some. The rest of the record is not as strong as that first tune, but still pretty damn good. There's a demo of The Orange Billboard, a couple of other new songs and two very interesting covers. New song Ghost Of Love starts off with an enormous, arpeggiating synth riff, and then gradually adds layers - first a beat, then the blissed out vocals, then more synths, and finally some classic, Kevin Shields style shredding guitar. Then, about 2/3s of the way in the big rock drums pound in and it's gone from moody electro to raging rocker. The covers are inspired choices. Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne is whimsical and trippy like you'd expect. The most surprising one for me is their version of Midnight Oil's Stars Of Warburton. I was a pretty big Midnight Oil fan back in the day, so this impressed me. It's a relatively obscure album track from their 1990 album Blue Sky Mining. How many bands do you know that have covered Midnight Oil? I can't think of any. Moonbabies turn in a lovely version of this song, which is a mellow, melodic rocker with a lovely chorus and a melancholic feel to it. A great little EP that has me wanting more...