He had almost been able to remove the ”marathon” in the title. For Kornél Kovács’s second album is – in all cases for me – if Stockholm. How it is to live in, and with, a city that is not always so easy to love but where you have their friends and family and you’ll find almost everywhere. If nothing else, it is in all cases even your own.
The former music critic describes it himself in an unusually interesting press release: How he never really managed to get away from the capital, how it constantly causes him to think back on old relationships and events. If you live long enough on one and the same place – and probably it is well the time the marathon is aimed at – is it the end it’s a memory in every port, in every corner of the street. In the best case, something you have longed to meet again, but at least as often, probably more often, not at all.
is similar to Saint Etienne’s most Londoninfluerade discs a insideralbum, characterized by the where lifelong hatkärleken to, and doubting the pride, his hometown, which is only available of the native. Kovács lets the eight tracks is permeated by that he has lived here for thirty-three years and in at least fifteen of them spinning around in a nightlife that always fought an uphill battle, but still had the ambition to be at the forefront.
Every little mikrotrend that the last few decades have wandered around from the capital’s pre-club parties and bars, to underground svartklubbar and sommardrinksklibbiga terraces annexed lovingly and subtly into the Kovács dream of a long and warm gruppkram between house, r’n’b, techno, garage, and a hundred other influences. It is possibly the dance music, it is easy to think that you feel the smell of the smoke machines when you are at home in the speakers to hear the single ”Rocks,” or on the verge of annoying catchy melodislingan in the trailing ”^”, but perhaps it is even more music to listen to on headphones alone on the night bus or during the walk home.
there is also a deep sadness – call it Swedish, if you like – of how the regular guests Rebecca & Fiona visksjunger ”come back to me, my baby” and ”we say we’re ok” in the absolutely brilliant ”Club notes”, or how the overall tone in the jazzy ”Szombat” is equal gaslågeblå as the sky over the Bridge in a frosty november.
”Stockholm marathon” is an album for all halvunga, or no longer at all young, huvudstadsbor that some time has wandered full all the way from Djursholm to Danvikstull, from Blåsut to Jakobsberg – sometimes melancholic reasons, sometimes euphoric, but always in a more or less aimless and, of course, very stockholmsk search of something better. Maybe you find finally something, or rather someone, that’s what everything is about at its core – that can do this, with Kovács own words, ”pretty gritty city” a little more fun or cooler on the next place? Or next weekend?
Best tracks: ”Club notes”
Read more music reviews by Mattias Dahlström, for example, that Fat White Family are attacking today’s pop music in an underhand way.
