The Tough Alliance

I first talked about Sweden's The Tough Alliance last fall but had totally geeked out about them to my little mp3 e-zine or whatever [first incarnation of this hrr blog, if you were lucky enough to receive it and remember] during the late spring // early summer when I was totally in love with their very summery jams.

The two lads grace the front cover of the latest issue of Fader [download it here]. In the picture below, they are the whitebread Scandinavilads on the right, not the dancehall rhyme-spewing Busy Signal on the back/left. In the feature about them, the writer says their summer anthem and Swedish radio hit "First Class Riot" [download it below] "sounds like the sun emerging from puberty". I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm sure many of you don't know what I mean half the time I write about music I'm loving. Nonethenevertheless, I agree. I would have perhaps made that analogy/simile with their more summery anthem "Something Special" [download it below, too], which I blogged about last year. Then I said it was "good pop with a shadow of chill and a sprinkle of electronic coating the whole package". Unhuh.

TTA are part of a music collective in Gothenberg that also include like-minded and similar sounding Air France, who've kinda been my TTA of this spring/summer. They're on the same label and I'm pretty sure each often record with the other. Gothernberg, also home to space-dub chill maestros Studio, from what I can tell is like the new Bergen, Norway [home of Royksopp, Erlend Oye, et al]. Or like the new Bristol, England [home of Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, et al]. Little cities // big towns that harbor too much musical creativity. Like Austin or Denton, Tejas. Or any one block in the white parts of Brooklyn. Or any one block in the black parts of Brooklyn. Anyway,

Dig The Tough Alliance:
TTA - "First Class Riot"
TTA - "Something Special" highly recommended!
TTA - "A New Chance" highly recommended!
TTA - "Neo Violence"
TTA - "Koka Kola Veins"
TTA - "Miami"
TTA - "New York City Violence" [Alvy Singer remix]
TTA - "Taken Too Young" [a Taken By Trees cover]

Related:

Studio - "Brown Piano" highly recommended!
Studio - "Impossible"

Their album New Chance comes stateside later this year, but was released overseas last year. Purchase: Amazon : Strictly Discs : InSound : iTunes

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Also, much thanks to those who came out last night to see me throw down a couple of the above tunes [two people even asked about the above "Brown Piano", which was cool], along with some Weezer, MIA, Ike & Tina, Santogold, Chromeo, and other crazinesses. For the first time, I was even tipped out by Matt the bartender, which was very nice. That was most likely in part due to y'all coming out and tipping your waitresses and bartender Matt. Thanks, it was a very fun night.

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