June 29 — “Silver Spoon” by Dråpe

Dråpe

If you only listen to one song today, make it “Silver Spoon” by Dråpe (2011, from the EP Dråpe).

Dråpe is a shoegaze quintet from Oslo, Norway. They formed in 2010 and released their self-titled EP last autumn. They’re scheduled to release a full length album this autumn. They’re one of the three bands on the Riot Factory Records imprint Sad Songs For Happy People. The three bands on that sublabel (Snøskred, Dråpe, Angelica’s Elegy) function as a collective. They play together, tour together, share band members, record each other’s records. You know the drill.

I learned about Dråpe while doing some research for yesterday’s post about Snøskred. I was pleasantly surprised by how much high quality shoegaze and dreampop stuff there is coming out of Norway. On this label alone. I wouldn’t say that Oslo is the new Brooklyn in that regard, but it’s pretty impressive. Also, it’s quite nice to be able to confirm that there’s much more to Norwegian music than black metal and Sondre Lerche.

I went through that Norwegian film phase a few weeks ago, and now I’m on a bit of a Norwegian indie rock thing. All of that got me thinking about pretending to plan a trip to Oslo. I’m not actually gonna travel to Norway, but it’s fun to pretend. Just like I pretended to plan a trip to Helsinki last autumn. What makes this fake planning fun is the weather forecast for the next week or so. While it’s going to be 104°F (40°C) here, it’s going to be a very pleasant 63°F (17°C) there.

Anyway, I like this EP quite a bit, and I’ll be looking forward to the forthcoming album.

Here’s today’s song:

I really love the waves of distortion. It’s pretty obvious what their influences are. Of course everybody was heavily influenced by Loveless, and a lot of lazy people will say that anything even remotely shoegaze-y “sounds like MBV”. This actually does, though.

The whole EP is really strong, but my favorites are this one, and “I Would Never”, which is the first song on the EP. Even the name of that song sounds like MBV.

The Dråpe page has plenty of links for ordering a physical copy of the EP, and also the iTunes and Spotify links. If you live outside of Norway, you’ll want to visit your native iTunes store instead of using the link provided. And again, look for their debut album this autumn.