Rainbow Quartz
2007
In Stereo
About This Album
It is not unusual for a new artist to display the influence of performers who have come before, but some artists go a full step further into deliberately styling themselves on earlier eras. There are young jazz musicians who dress up in suits and play bebop as if the late 1940s had never ended, and there are country artists who sing and play as though nothing had ever come after Hank Williams. Marmalade Souls, a Swedish trio making its debut with In Stereo, fits into this more extreme form of musical endeavor; in their case, they play music that apes the British Invasion sound of the mid-'60s. The first hint of this comes with the title, which references the era of the '60s prior to about 1967, when LPs came in both mono and stereo, with an indication of which edition the disc was on the cover. The cover of In Stereo also looks like that of a mid-'60s LP, advertising "14 tracks previously unreleased," and listing some of them. On the disc itself, Michael Klemmé, who sings most of the lead vocals, plays most of the instruments, and co-writes the songs with Johanna Klemmé, pays tribute to the John Lennon of 1964-1965 for the most part, coming up with tracks that sound like they were intended to fit snugly onto Beatles for Sale or Help! Sometimes, he evokes a specific song; "In My Mind (There Is No Doubt)" inescapably recalls "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," for example, and there are little arranging details -- a guitar riff here, an "ooh la-la-la" background vocal there -- that have been borrowed.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4 and 5)

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