Okay, okay, so I jumped the gun a little bit with my "album of the year" fanfare last month, but Korallreven's An Album by Korallreven is still the best example of the traditional album album, that is, a coherent piece of music that needs and demands to be listened to as a whole, rather than downloaded and broken apart into favourite moments.
The duo of Marcus Joons and Daniel Tjader was inspired to make this record following a visit to Samoa and witnessing the pure joy of the Catholic Church choir singing that takes place on the Pacific island - and you can hear that sunny joy throughout An Album. It's a record of fantasy summers, romance, the naturalistic joy in living things and, above all, a wonderful pop record.
Speaking to Joons after their recent marvellous show in Glasgow (and here comes some shameless self-promotion and back-patting) he said that some reviews (mine) managed to pick up on the idea that the record was a song cycle, and had to be listened to as such. This feeds into the makeup of the various mixtapes the band has released this year, and also the way that the tracks 'Sa Sa Samoa' and 'As Young As Yesterday' reflect each other and tie the first half of the record together, just like how the final trio of 'Honey Mine', 'A Surf on Endorphins' and 'Comin' Down' tie the dreamlike state of the second half of the album together.
Lit up by guest spots from Victoria Bergsman and Julianna Barwick, it's a joy of a dream-pop album, it's 1980s synthpop, it's futuristic 21st century electro at its finest. A good few years in the making, but worth the wait, An Album by Korallreven is just the beginning of a beautiful sun-dappled journey with these Swedish maestros.
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