Okay, so there's this band Teddybears that's just been popping up everywhere over the last few weeks, particularly on the MP3 blogs. People keep posting the same track over and over (and I am going to as well, with a twist) and the buzz is predictably building. There's one thing that strikes me as really weird about the whole thing.Teddybears isn't exactly a new band.
Not by any stretch of the imagination!
They're better known everywhere else in the world as Teddybears STHLM -- the STHLM is for their home of Stockholm -- and they've realeased quite a few albums over the last, oh, fifteen years. In fact their U.S.A. debut, Soft Machine, is filled with previously released songs. A few have been re-recorded to bulk up / update the sound and now feature vocals from instantly recognizable voices like Neneh Cherry, Iggy Pop and Annie. For the most part there isn't anything new so I'm not sure why people are only now going gonzo over the band.
Heck, their actual lead singer is the lead singer of The Caesars (though I can't figure out if it’s Teddybears or the Caesars that one would consider his side project,) so it's not exactly like his own vocals are exactly alien to the American ear!
Anyway, I've enjoyed the bands last two albums so I'm pleased to see them getting some exposure over here finally. I guess my only gripe is reading all the blogs that go on and on about them but get so much of the information about them so wrong.
To give you an idea of what I mean by the songs being re-worked (and how i'm not 100% sold it was actually always necessary) here is "Yours To Keep," the lead-off single (I presume, though it may be "Cobrastyle,") off Soft Machine. Compare it to the song's original incarnation on 2000's Rock'n'Roll Highschool.
Teddybears "Yours To Keep" (with Neneh Cherry)
See? The new version with Neneh Cherry is rather bulked up, and I dig it, but the original with Paolo just has this sort of wistful air that is so timeless I'm always in the mood to hear it.
Anyway, here's another track of the new album. It has a sort of dreamy beauty to it that plasters a big smile across my face that's tinged with just a hint of regret and sentimental melancholy. Only I have no idea why.
Yeah, I think that's just the sort of tone I want to leave on today. What a lovely little couple songs. I hope you enjoy them too.
As a whole the album is a piece of quirky, slightly left-of-center electronic pop. It actually sort of reminds me of that Len album from a few years back, and I mean that in a good way. On first listen the songs don't really seem built to last, but when you take into consideration that most of the material is a few years old, and how fresh it still sounds, you realize we are either dealing with a band that was ahead of its time, or we're dealing with a band that nows how to write a pop song that is of every moment.
The disc isn't a masterpiece, to be sure, but it is another example of the Swedes showing the rest of the world how to write smart pop songs that go right for the pleasure center without resorting to cheap tricks to get there.
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