For a few years now, Soundtrack of Our Lives co-founder Björn Olsson’s been more interested in making instrumental solo records than anything resembling his old band’s psych-pop shamble. Fortunately for everyone, none of Olsson’s mottled live band soundscapes are ever as hamfisted as the title of his 1999 album, Instrumental Music ... to Submerge in ... and Disappear Through. Yeah man, pass it on the left.
Instead he’s enthralled with Ennio Morricone, whose compositions for those old spaghetti Westerns made every desert vista drip with bitter melancholy. On Olsson/Ottestig/Andersson’s “Melodi i F#-moll,” Olsson recalls the acoustic guitar’s mournful minor chords, its faraway sigh as the snare drum trickles across the gravel like a runaway horse’s bridle. Meanwhile “Låt i F#-moll” and “Insomning” mix plaintive lead guitar licks with clopping percussion and slight Latin flourishes. You immediately imagine the Man with No Name’s sneer behind these tracks. But they do still have a life of their own, and Olsson hasn’t shucked psychedelia completely. The lengthy “Insomning” is stained with the plum wine plea of Love, and there are tinges of Pink Floyd in “”Lång Låt i A-Dur.” Björn’s a dreamer at heart, even if it’s those creaky, arid old Westerns that his music most evokes.
Johnny Loftus writes about music for Metro Times. E-mail [email protected].
