One of the trends of the now-soon-ending decade has been The Electronic Sidestep. Throughout the decade guitar-based bands have been saying things such as “we got bored of guitars” or “we wanted to try something new” or even “we really dig that Aphex Twin dude so we just kinda got inspired”, and each year there’s been yet another notch in the wood for rock bands leaving their guitars behind and either started to focuse more on keyboards while decreasing the amount of their traditional instruments, or going as far as ditching the rock essence alltogether and beginning to twiddle the synthesizer knobs. It’s not a bad thing either. Sound expansion is always good and while there’s always going to be fans who can’t take it that their precious guitaring is now stripped away, it’s good to let the band reign free creatively. The result may sometimes be a miss – sure you got the electronic backing but did you do anything actually interesting with it? – but there’s always the chance of something great.

Kent released Tillbaka till samtiden in 2007. It seemed like their electronic sidestep moment. Synthesizers and keyboards were in full blast but you could still tell they were a rock band – the latter half of the album especially saw several moments where the band went back towards their more usual route. It was a fantastic album and stands as one of my favourites of the band, but I always knew in my heart that I shouldn’t get too used to the new sound. While the band had been hiding synthetic influences behind their guitar rock for years and years, now finally letting them come to full bloom, the nature of Electronic Sidesteps are that they are just that, sidesteps. Discography oddities that will become an awkward interview moment for the following years, becoming a cult love affair for the fans. Tillbaka was excellent, but it was still only a sidestep.

Well, that’s what we thought at the time.

While Tillbaka till samtiden still bore the signs of being an album by a rockband, the latest album Röd has completed the transformation. Here and there you get the occasional reference of Kent’s former sound: the live instrument choruses of “Vals för Satan”, the stadium-rock-in-new-clothes dovetailing of “Svarta linjer”, the bombastic “Hjärta”. They’re but fleeting moments however and if you were to introduce this album to a person who had never heard Kent before this (which would be most of you I assume, unless you read that retrospective a while ago in case of which I thank you for taking your time) they probably couldn’t tell. Kent still sounds like a band playing together, but it’s a band with a whole new set of instruments and an ambition to use them to their greatest advantage.

What strikes first in Röd is how much of an album it is. It’s not just how the tracks have a tendency to segue together and flow perfectly from one another  – although the switch from the church hymn intro to the cool-as-fuck synth disco of “Taxmannen” is brilliant and the following transition from Taxmannen to “Krossa allt” is so subtle you can’t even tell it on the first listens – that’s very common with albums after all. It’s the sheer density and feel of everything belonging together that fuels it. The same desperation is audible on every song (Joakim Berg is really in a top shape musically and lyrically here), the same mixture of cold cool and human emotion fuels each song. The sound’s dense and occasionally self-referencing. The styles switch but everything feels cohesive: “Ensamheten”’s neurotic dance, “Töntarna”’s vicious, malicious groove and the fragile, frail beauty of “Det finns inga ord” all sound completely different yet are all a part of the same gang in every other way.

One big exception to all however, and I might as well mention the album’s largest weakness here – buried in the latter half of the tracklist you can find a song called “Idioter”. It sounds like a twisted summer novelty one hit wonder. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, it also sounds irritating. As an additional pain its pseudo-sunshine clashes with the mood and the otherwise perfect flow of the album. It’s one of the weakest things the band has put on an album.

When most bands take their electronic sidestep, the result tends to be an either/or situation between two extremes. It can be something you could call as immensely cool and emotionally cold; te usage of a more machinised instruments, melodies and rhythm built on sampled loops and digitalised effects rather than direct playing, tends to bring out the nihilist in the musicians. It could also however reveal the bare, naked heart of the music, a fractured torment hidden behind the facade of synthetic cool. Viola coined their remix album series Melancholydisco – Röd takes that name and runs with the concept. You may often find yourself quietly dancing to Röd before coming down again when the tempo gets slower – the mood however never strays away from the broken loneliness on the dancefloor.

They will always be a rock band in their heart and their former side does reveal itself occasionally during Röd. Yet underneath its dark covers, the album reveals a band that’s perfectly figured out how to switch their style in a fashionable way while keeping their soul, experience and skill intact, knowing exactly how to operate their new sound.

Töntarna

MP3: Vals för Satan (Din vän pessimisten)

Tags: Kent

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.