On The Cinnamon
'On The Cinnamon'
(Cannelle Gramophone)

 by Johanna B. Bodde

On The Cinnamon
 'On The Cinnamon'
(Cannelle Gramophone)
www.onthecinnamon.com



This must be a new Swedish band! The disc (in a small plastic envelope) came out of nowhere, only accompanied by an info-sheet with a review on the back. Somebody must have given somebody my address... There is very little info on the Internet, what I see is mostly in Swedish or contains that same review! Must have been written by a friend from their hometown: Umea. Yes, there it is again: on the band's website! Set up nicely with a great picture, but otherwise still kinda empty. I did find some info regarding the band name: that is a direct translation of an old Swedish expression saying that somebody's a bit drunk. Excuse me?

So, let's go exploring! There has been a release on vinyl, which is always good. All nine songs are written by Jonas Lindsköld. Don't feel cheated by that number, most tracks are rather long, three clock around the five minutes and one even at six-and-a-half, to a total of almost 40 minutes. Jonas is also the vocalist, he plays guitar and organ, piano plus mellotron and harmonica. The other band members are Per Ericson (lead guitar), Patrik Ägren (bass) and Kristoffer Fredriksson (drums). All three gentlemen sing backing vocals too! This self-titled debut was recorded last Summer, in their hometown Umea, indeed. 




How shall I describe their musical style? Folkrock, indiepop, with some altcountry maybe and a bit of guitar rock. No blatant imitation of anything, luckily. Charming, mostly intimate, simple in a good way. Jonas has a beautiful voice, makes me think of the young James Taylor, but the music has certainly more 'bite'. His pronunciation and use of the English language is very convincing, if I didn't know he was Swedish, I probably wouldn't have noticed. That's a compliment - I know how difficult this always is! The band plays very well together, they probably just look at each other and know already exactly what to do. A big plus is their added backing vocals, which gives some songs the Simon & Garfunkel effect, where that friendly lone review refers to. The recording and mixing has been done very professional too, by one engineer and two band members - with good ears! We all know, that even some 'big' names have problems with their ears every now & then... What this band does, probably with limited resources, is very recommendable.

Without a booklet or any info about the lyrics I can't get too deep into that matter. Most is written about the usual 'people' subjects: love and other relationships in our daily life. Good choice of titles anyway: "On Their Last Day Together", "Seas Of The Sun" sounds intriguing, "When Are You Gonna Come Home" always does the trick for me - no matter how often it might be used, even "Traffic Lights" offers me some images I like. And there's at least one nightingale passing by somewhere in a song...

Would I recommend this album? It made me feel good and I didn't get bored. So: definitely 'yes'. At least they have a second review now!

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Written by Johanna J. Bodde, August 15th, 2014.
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