Komeda: All Swedish, All the Time; Primal Scum-Wallow from the Embarrassment

For Komeda obsessives who haven't already scoured the Internet for downloads of the band's 1993 release Pop Pa Svenska (Pop in Swedish), the bad news is Napster is dead. The good news is Komeda's longtime U.S. distributor, Minty Fresh, has decided to rerelease the album (with an EP, Plan 714 Till, thrown in for good measure) to satiate the band's American audience.

Pop Pa Svenska is Komeda in their original form, back before the capable Mattias Nordlander replaced the original guitarist, back when the band sang entirely in their native tongue. Pop Pa Svenska is all Swedish, all the time, and the language hasn't sounded this good since Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman whispered breathless confessions to each other in Persona. Minty Fresh sticks with the original lyrics sheet, which, although useless for those of us whose only experience with Swedish is the Muppet chef, is nonetheless fascinating. Who knew words like "funderar" and "ogonlock" could be so perky? Or that "Peter Frampton" in Swedish is "Peter Frampton"?

The language looks a bit like German, but sung out loud it takes on a softness around the edges, a kind of downiness made even more plush in the mouth of Komeda frontlady Lena Karlsson, who sings with a vigor born of bracing winds and rugged climes. Pop Pa Svenska's raw vitality won't be a big surprise to Komeda buffs who have caught the band's high-energy live shows, but a new recruit will be amazed at the verve these northern popsters exude. While the rest of the world was still wallowing in sludge guitar and flannel, the Swedes were gathered around the seance table channeling not the past, but the future of pop. The album sounds remarkably fresh, as if Komeda has managed to leap eight years in a single bound to land smack in the midst of 2001. What has become their trademark sound, a blend of cheery new wave, martini lounge swing and 70s soundtrack sweep (they're named after Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda, who scored for Roman Polanski) had already found its legs with Pop Pa Svenska. Komeda seems to have emerged from Umea, their just-south-of-the-Arctic Circle college town, fully formed, combining their various influences to stumble across something entirely new.

There weren't many bands in the early 90s experimenting with these sorts of sounds, but Komeda has never been shy about mixing and matching instrumentation. Pop Pa Svenska features the usual drum-bass-guitar-synth combinations, but to that the band adds whatever happens to take their fancy; a French horn here, a harp there, a xylophone accent, a bit of playful accordion, viola and violins in a graceful undercurrent and even the click and clack of an old-school typewriter. The songs themselves contain bits and pieces of the recognizable, from the touch of James Bond ballad in "Vals Pa Skare" to the samba swing in "Bonjour Tristesse" to the Dave Brubeck jump-off point of "Snurrig Bossa Nova," but Komeda always manages to slip away at the last moment into welcome unfamiliarity. One can catch a hint of everything from Devo-style guitar riff punch in "Oj Vilket Liv!" to the bass-driven melody of early Throwing Muses in "Ad Fontes," but each song quickly spins off into its own unique orbit.

Komeda is a happy enigma, their sound offering many things you can pinpoint but nothing you can get your hands around. The advantage of existing on the chilly border of the Arctic Circle, far from the sweet din just beginning to fade in the Pacific Northwest, is that Komeda was making music that was wholly their own, the sound of that particular place, in that particular time. Pop Pa Svenska is the sound of a smallish Swedish college town, in the near-middle of the 1990s, just as Paranoid is the sound of industrial Northern England in the early 1970s and Nothing's Shocking is the sound of an exhausted L.A. attempting redemption at the tail end of the 1980s. The most fascinating thing, however, is that Pop Pa Svenska is also the sound of now, of a time where "pop" is not just in Swedish but in Belgian and French and Japanese and British and American too. Thanks to eight years of evolution, the expansion of the Internet and unprecedented access to bands around the world, Komeda's beloved pop has become music's own international language.

Jessica Hundley

Blister Pop The Embarrassment (My Pal God) I'm getting old. Not only do my calves hurt from doing the frug with a carbine cutie with platinum hair at an old folks home this past weekend, but increasingly I don't "identify" with rock 'n' roll anymore?or at least bands in which three-fifths of the membership have funny little half-beards and are named Jason. But the Embarrassment are different?they hail from an era I understand totally, because I was there?not in Wichita, where they broke out from in '79, but, you know, philosophically there nevertheless. Because in those days, every town had a band like the Embarrassment?bands making good on the promise of punk by being intentionally sloppy but also introducing some of the geekier qualities that would beget indie rock. I was in a band like this, sure. Who wasn't? It was easy, and there were no delusions of grandeur. It was simply a way to have fun and express emotion that otherwise would've just gone down the endless vacuum like everything else.

It was also an opportunity to wear your hip?and sometimes unhip?tastes on your collective sleeve, and that's what the Embarrassment does on this collection of posthumous scraps. Blister Pop is the Embarrassment's own little piece of history?long past the "official" releases, which were collected on a Bar/None compilation, these are the absolute garbage-can scrapings. Surprisingly, they hold up pretty well. Consisting of tapes of various live dates performed during the years '79-'83, this is some primal scum-wallow from a band that is every bit as much the geek-rock prototype as the Feelies. Less Velvets in evidence in the case of the Embarrassment, but there are plenty of the other influences that marked the era, from 60s punk ("Pushin' Too Hard") to a heavy Iggy quotient ("I Wanna Be Your Dog," "Funtime"). In a song like "Faith Healer," in this case recorded on Feb. 26, '82, at what was essentially Wichita's version of the Cavern Club/CBGB, the Cedar, there are a lot of the quirky textures of "new wave" (Devo, XTC), but in the end it bursts into a more exhilarating breakneck upstomp. These guys perpetually remind me of all the bands I knew in Boston in the 80s?not surprisingly, a couple of ex-members of the Embarrassment ended up in combos from that perpetual stronghold of collegiate geekiness: drummer Woody Giessman with the Del Fuegos and vocalist Bill Goffrier in Big Dipper (which was essentially a slicker remake of the Embarrassment by the sounds of it).

The Embarrassment by their own claim cannot be pigeonholed?at the beginning of this disc there's a snippet of a radio interview the boys did, most likely sometime in the early 80s, where they attempt to define their sound. "I wouldn't want people to think we were an art band," one of them says. That's probably not likely, at least judging by the performances on Blister Pop?some of it is Descendents fast/dumb ("Song for Val"). But in other cases, they show their "square" roots. In their case, they dig on oldies shit ("Pretty Woman," "On Broadway") and the Beatles ("No Reply"). Playing Beatles tunes was uncool for the time, but given recent circumstances it was indicative of?something. (Like maybe the Embarrassment really were geeks?)

But if they really were geeks then it's only fair to compare them to the geek-rockers of nowadays. In that case, a "power pop" opus like "Faith Healer" totally cuts down to size such modern-day purveyors as Pennsylvania's Bigger Lovers. Nine out of 20 tunes here are covers, making these guys the essential frat-rock band of the Midwest. Their "Pushin' Too Hard" was at least as good as the Lyres', although the Ramones and Angry Samoans cut them on "Time Has Come Today." Meanwhile "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is static on an almost Peter Laughner level.

And so it went? As they battled to be the kings of the cornfield, they were not an "embarrassment" at all. I think it's a keeper.

Joe S. Harrington