Posted on September 1, 2010 - by Mark Zonda

Stars in Coma and the Clouds

First time I heard about Stars in Coma was in a room of a girl (“Hic!”). She told me with starry eyes on her vault about this boy from Sweden sharing his fantastic and artistic view of the World through his music from a lonely room. I was deep in my Cloudberry period, and I didn’t take much to appreciate the music from Andrè Brorsson thanks their nice release and the “official collection” “You’re Still Frozen in Time” by Plastilina Records.

Still time was not so frozen apparently. I met Andrè on his Italian tour, carrying heavy drums for Håkan Carlsson, and then – two years later – I got the chance to laugh at this meeting the guys at Indietracks, having Andrè editing  stuff for my band, me promoting his new album with my newborn label, and Håkan designing the cover for this new album.

Andrè music is a floating river as well. Besides many other musicians from Sweden finding hard to find their voices out of the indie cliques, Stars in Coma project shows clear attempts to reach out for new musical directions keeping an eye on the most interesting novelties on nowadays avant-pop scene, especially concerning electronica.

New work for KinGem Records is called “And The Cloud Withdrew From The Sky”. The album is a sort of a self-archeology project having the artist deeping himself on the seas of his emotions and memories of the last years of the first y2k decade. It’s a very heart-to-heart album in my opinion, with our heroes talking to us in a very poetic yet direct way, addressing to us to unveil his “Macro” emotions. Along with its terribly good catchy melodies is the very reason why I love this album so bad. It’s quite hunted, in a manner of speaking, full of mixed emotions on reflections on independence vs dependence situations forcing me to think of one of Bob Dylan’s album I love the most: “Blood on the track”.

“The basement tapes”? Could be, since “And The Cloud…” opens with an happy-sad track called “In your rooms”, and listening to Andrè singing about lovers escaping paths clutching on winter coats can’t stop me to make me wondering ’bout Bob and Suzie Rotolo on the “FreeWheeling” cover.

Possibly the artist will hate me for that, but the album is full of happy ballads like “Macro-Motion” remind me of the greatest soft moment of Pizzicato 5 -  like “Ma Vie, L’Ete De Vie” – especially for the up beat rhyrthm, unespected change of temp à-la-Gilbert O’Sullivan, the clever and rich arrangement and the bluesey piano.

Other tracks like “Am I Hermetical?” are apparently deeply influenced by Of Montreal, Grandaddy and Animal Collective, still being able to sound personal and autenthically Stars in Coma, quite a modern electronic version of “The House Of The Rising Sun” colliding with “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot “.

“Golden Sight, Golden View” is just too delicious and totally SiC. You HAVE to surrender to his perfect pop sound, being possibly the best produced song of the album, with the catchiest synths ever.

“And The Cloud Withdrew From The Sky” closes with a very unusual slow intimate  (and surprising) ballad called “My Hidden Fears”, with a deep and intense crescendo on totally inspired lyrics able to close a little important cinematic album like the perfect score for faultless end titles.

Stars in Coma -  “In Your Prison”

Bob Dylan – “Down the highway”

Pizzicato 5 – “Ma Vie, L’ete de Vie”

Grandaddy – “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot”

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