EN SE DE

  • Pale Silver & Shiny Gold

    HHF1018

    Artist: Sad Day For Puppets

    Label: HaHa Fonogram

    Recorded last winter in a freezing cold Stockholm, ‘Pale Silver & Shiny Gold’ comes just over a year after their acclaimed debut, ‘Unknown Colors’, but at a mere 37 minutes is much more focused and concise. As the crows that have replaced the finches on the band’s logo seem to indicate, it’s also a much darker and heavier album. This is perhaps a result of touring extensively with A Place To Bury Strangers (the two bands got on so famously that Strangers mainman Oliver Ackermann is named as the ‘patron saint’ of the album).

    Regardless of how it happened, ‘Pale Silver & Shiny Gold’ is something of a minor-key masterpiece. It opens with the mournful ‘Sorrow, Sorrow’, which sees Anna joined by her sister Annika for some beautiful harmonies like some kind of Swedish Everly Sisters. This gives way to ‘Such A Waste’, which takes the overt J Mascis references of their debut and shifts them into overdrive. ‘Monster & The Beast’, is slow and menacing and about as scary as the cover art, which looks like it’s straight out of a Grimm’s fairy tale. It’s not all heaviness and misery though – ‘Beads’ is a simple, acoustic, lovelorn ballad, ‘Touch’ is pure, Primitive(s) indie-pop with about three different choruses.

    Sad Day For Puppets were formed in 2006 in the Stockholm satellite town of Blackeberg, the setting for the creepy vampire book/film ‘Let The Right One In’. Martin Källholm, the band’s resident songwriting genius, claims to be inspired by Thin Lizzy, Cheap Trick, Kiss an...