David Fridlund has made intriguing pop music for years with David & The Citizens, but the time had come for a solo record. From Amazon: "I never planned a solo record, everything I wanted we already did with the Citizens." David says, "But the more people mentioned the solo idea, the more it grew, so when our Swedish booker Jesper Kumberg asked: 'isn't it time for that solo record' it all sort of fell into place." Kumberg has worked with David since early 1999, helping his band to over 200 shows and taken some praise for propelling David and the Citizens to dizzy heights and a Grammy nomination. "But we had run Citizens aground," Says David, "Admittedly; we were close to splitting, and probably would have if the work on this record had not got going." Fridlund may be a pop musician and Swedish, but this doesn’t mean he makes platitudinous fluff like a certain world’s most renowned Swedish group that stalked the Earth in matching disco suits many years before.
Fridlund’s music is piano based, evocative, cerebral pop that will lead you right down the path laid by a group like Belle & Sebastian , but with an element of bombast and unease. Amaterasu, which is the name of the Shinto sun goddess, begins with a burst of static that resolves into ocean spray before Sara Culler’s ethereal voice begins the proceedings on the minimal “Circles” before David joins in halfway through the song. There’s a British music hall bounce to the idiosyncratic “April & May” that will have you humming along. Each song seems to be interconnected in a vague lyrical way, and the music lends a quite mysterious aura to things that is oddly moving. Sufjan Stevens fans would probably like this album very much.
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