Is it pouring with rain where you are? I’ve yet to draw back my curtains but I’m sensing grey. I can hear cars swooshing through puddles as early risers weave their way to work. It’s a thoroughly depressing sound and even the birds that are singing seem muted today.
Thank goodness therefore for happy, sunny songs such as this one from Californian twee pop band, The Corner Laughers. Midsommar is a bright breeze of a piece and is released in advance of The Corner Laughers fourth album. If you like your music joyful then I’d recommend checking out more of the offerings from Karla Kane and gang. I have been over these last few depressingly, drizzly days. The album from a couple of years ago, Poppy Seeds, would seem like a pretty fine place to start.
Vaguely aware of midsummer through the summer solstice, I had little idea that the ‘Midsommar’ celebrations in Sweden are such festive affairs. A national Bank Holiday is called on the weekend closest to June 24th. Swedes flock to the countryside where they set up camp for the night, wear crowns made of flowers, build a midsommarstang (like a community maypole), dance, sing, eat and drink potent drops of the alcoholic drink, Akvavit, around a Bonfire as night sets in. It does all sound like a rather glorious time.
And it’s those glorious moments of time that I think The Corner Laughers are trying to capture in Midsommar. From the initial strums of ukulele through to a pompous but not out of place guitar solo, this is a tune about celebrating good times. The impossibly happy chorus encourages us to frame those memories for they might be few and far between.
I defy you not to have a glorious time.
sonicbreakfast 