I was – and this is the least rock n roll start to a rock n roll review ever – listening to The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 the other night (for anyone outside the UK it’s a speech radio channel that would consider me in my mid-40s as one of its younger listeners….) and they had a feature about the way Sweden was dealing with Coronavirus.
What a civilised country it sounds, and that is even before you have factored in the presence of some of the finest bands on the planet on its shores. I won’t list them again (I’ve done that enough) but bravo, Sweden, bravo!
That might, just, be where their confidence comes from. I mean, I saw The Hives years and years ago, on one of their first jaunts over here (thanks to the miracle of the Internet I can tell you that it was on 27th September 2000 that they opened for The Yo-Yo’s and Groop Dogdrill) and their singer marched out on stage (and from memory, the crowd was sparse) and yelled: “Hello, Dudley, we are The Hives from Sweden, we are your new favourite band….!” A year later or so they had a mega hit with “Hate To Say I Told You So” and a top ten album.
Fast forward almost thirty years and welcome Dictator Ship. “Your Favourites” has more than a title that had me thinking of The Hives, because these Swedes have a similarly ragged, garage, 60s soul while the guitars slash thing going on.
Seven songs. 27 minutes long. Released in 2020, but honestly, it could have come out at any point in the history of rock n roll. It’s like the four of them have been cryogenically frozen in a studio somewhere and only put back in the wild at this time.
It’s wonderful. And it pretty much gives its secrets away in the opening 30 seconds of opening track “In The Heat Of The Night”. Because that’s how long the intro takes and how long it takes Petter Heinemann to sing “In the heat of the night, that’s when love comes around,” like he was born to do it.
You can compare them to who you like, The Sonics, The Stooges or a million Swedish bands from the turn of the century (most of whom had Nicke Andersson in) or you can instead lose your shit to the chorus of: “Don’t try to sugar coat it, I am crap and yeah I know it”.
This is a brilliant new band. Savage is like a maelstrom of rock n roll. “The drunk tank is the nicest place to be” offers its lyrics, and that might indicate the mood. However, rather like “Good Thing Gone Bad”, which rhymes “I don’t pay no rent” with “juvenile delinquent” with a genuine and complete relish, it is tempting to imagine these men listening to their parents record collection dreaming of this sound. Now it’s a reality, like on “Eat The Poor” they aren’t passing this chance up. Not even a little bit.
The twin guitar approach – John Sijbren Leonard joins the singer on the six string – makes DS just a little harder edge and a bit more scuzzy, and “Eat The Poor” is an example, given that it starts with a solo and packs an incredible amount of fun into its four and a half minutes.
“Gunner Man” is as raw as you like. The utterly glorious sound that Leonard (who also engineers this) gets makes this perfect. More soulful than the others, maybe. It has the urgency of a Fire And Brimstone sermon.
A feature of these is the songs aren’t two minute romps. No, “From The Womb To The Tomb” stretches past five minutes, and that, to me, indicates a band has eyes on longevity. A proper career, and I will bet they are fabulous live too.
Dictator Ship then, “Your Favourites”? New favourites, maybe. They probably have bigger ambitions, though.
Rock n roll exactly the way it should be.
Rating 9/10
