Go to Nordhemsgatan in Gothenburg so from the ferry terminal down on the waterfront, over the city’s rummelcentrum on the four Streets, through the districts of Masthugget and Olivedal, all the way up to the Natural history Museum, a stone’s throw away, the indie pop of Sweden’s most legendary rock. A walk from the Stena Line to the Shoreline, thus, a stroll down memory lane as a middle-aged Håkan Hellström takes in the best song on his eighth album, and seeing young people doing what he himself did a hundred years ago. Or if it were yesterday.
Fixed Hellström claim – so clearly – that the street in fact, leads straight into the sky.
somewhere the music on his eighth album, the entire time aiming. ”Illusions” is an album that wants to be so great that the gates to the above which shall be opened wide and the angels shall applaud. Each song is built up against the grandiose crescendos that unashamedly shouts, ”Elvis Costello, little friend, cute that you once made a whole album with a string quartet, I call you and raise with the Gothenburg Symphony orchestra”.
Hellström, Björn and Olsson (who has a hand in most of it here) has snuddat at the expression earlier, a song ”vid protesfabrikens stängsel” is just an example, but have never done it as consistently or grand as in the ”Illusions”.
If the forerunners ”It will never be over for me” and, above all, ”You old, you free” sometimes seemed written, arranged and produced with a crowded Ullevi stadium in mind, this is clearly an album that probably is not meant to be played live at all. If Hellstrom is now not planning to lug an entire orchestra across the country.
I don’t know about hellström’s self-imposed turnépaus would result in more experimentation in the studio, an opportunity to find other ways forward than to run a jubilant rocktåg all the way into the tile, but it is there somewhere he ends up. But for the sake of is absolutely convinced that it actually is the right way.
after last summer’s New Orleans-aesthetically framed and glädjerusiga extra-all-and-some-to-arenarockföreställningar have ”Illusions” is undoubtedly a points. It is possible to reach the great emotions in ways other than by spectacular choruses, Stax-blow and soulkörer. So this skirt and the light has hellström’s fragile voice and the lyrics about the love in which you hold on to each other as ”two boxers in the last round” – never sandwiched between the past.
at the same time, this experiment (I think probably it is so you can categorize the ”Illusions”) also a difficult balancing act between the symphonic spectacular and direct pompous. Maybe it’s just not accustomed to hear him like this, but it is far from always as Håkan Hellström earn to be backed by half of The combined drums and trumpets.
Best tracks: ”Nordhemsgatan lead straight into the sky”
Link to the spotify
Read more music reviews by Mattias Dahlström , for example, if the avant-garde relentlessly hard rockpoesi .