Pancake list is closing down on no. 1

We we're all hoping that Frog Eyes would actually have, well, frog eyes. Instead they look like your average US indieband. Fortunatelly for them Mr. Pancake is way to deep to care about superficial things like that.

Då var det dags för ytterligare två låtar från förra året från Amsterdamkorren Mr Pancake.

So it's time for two more songs from the past year, courtesy of our Amsterdam correspondent Mr Pancake.

Yes, we do love his writing up here in the north, and any white Amsterdam male dropping Dizzee lines while praising Frog Eyes just a few lines later does give the name "open your fucking mind" a new sort of realness, don't you think?

4. Jens Lekman – A Postcard to Nina
Ah yes: a Swede. Finally. Did it really have to take so long? Jens Lekman, in any case, is one brilliant artist, and surely delivered one of the absolute highlights of 2007, album-wise, with Night Falls over Kortedala – it was on top of my Christmas wish list, illustratively. What I find so staggeringly fascinating is the intimacy Lekman manages to put into his heavily orchestrated indie tunes. Actually, ‘heavily orchestrated’ is rather euphemistic in his case, making the average Rat Pack rip-off (Michael Bublé, are you listening?) look like a Steve Albini fan club member. The most amazing thing about this nearly corny overdose of violins, flutes and dreamy major seventh chords is nowadays pretty much the most innovative musical landscape anyone respectable and not-retired can come up with, in an era when every half assed singer is pussy enough to drop things like they’re hot.

This song is not so much musically overwhelming as the rest of that album: it is relatively modest in its orchestration, sporting a few keyboards, a humble brass section, and hey, let’s throw in a harp just for the hell of it. What puts this song in my list, and rather high up, is its lyrical content: in a much appreciated example of that ‘old skool storytellin’ shit’, to quote Dizzee Rascal, Lekman brilliantly describes the awkward situation of a protagonist having to pretend being a lesbian’s boyfriend, to comfort her religious father. In Berlin. Really, this guy should try writing novels: he effortlessly racks up amazing details, putting on record some of the most hilarious situations in any song I’ve heard this century – the Team America: World Police soundtrack notwithstanding.

The sweetest thing however is something lurking in the background, and like in every legendary pop song, one can only guess as to what it means exactly. I can’t say this with certainty, but the protagonist, himself really, seems to like this Nina chick a bit more than he is admitting: firstly, he followed this girl he’s just met to her dad’s apartment, and when it is all over, he still thinks of her every second. In any case, Jens is cool with it, being the nice guy that he is, hoping she’ll let nothing stand in her way. It is quite a relief to know that somewhere, nice guys still exist, putting the wellness of others before their own shitty needs. If any of you Swedes ever run into this guy, give him a cuddle for me. He deserves it.

3. Frog Eyes – Bushels
Sometimes, one just sits and thinks stuff like, whatever happened to David Bowie? What is that guy up to nowadays? But then, it needn’t last very long, because sooner or later you run into a band like Frog Eyes, who with this song completely own what Bowie used to be doing god knows when, even emulating his vocal style marvellously. This song, gladly, is much more than that though: if you like the energy of The Arcade Fire, you’re gonna love this. Turn it up to eleven, and soon you and these band members are happily sharing straitjackets at the local institution: stopping and starting, halting and restarting, much like a whirlwind, or whatever is the tropical storm of your fancy, this song has energy, emotion, and sheer madness coming out of its pores. And oh, there’s over nine minutes of this blissful swivelling.

What that singer is blurting out, no one knows, but between those chiming piano notes, psycho blues guitar, and thumping rhythm section, it doesn’t really matter what the words are. This dude sings them like he means it, and that’s far more important.

After seven and a half minute – it’s not as bad as it sounds, trust me – the most magical moment of all happens: the song finally seems to drop dead, but no. Staccato guitar strumming comes out of nowhere, and the whole bunch suddenly rise out of the ashes gloriously – only to fall back down and grind to a jingle-bells led halt a minute later. This is music at its most epic, energetic, frantic, and fucked up, and I take off a very large hat to that.