Oh Mothership
Marching On

A Swedish quartet where gender equality seems important considering that there are two guys and two girls in the band, they are releasing their debut album they call Marching On. Perhaps they are marching on towards their own musical greatness or marching on towards sounding like their sources of inspiration. Their cover artwork isn’t that interesting, not too shabby band photos though. So, what can we expect from this mothership?

We can expect music that is heavily inspired by the past, rock music with blues influences and female vocals. There are many familiar things and nothing that seems new or inventive, a style of music that will always sound familiar and to some it might even appear dull and stuck in the past. The production sounds very modern though, so all isn’t lost in nostalgia. The vocals are very good, I really like how the girl sings and she might actually be the highlight of the album. An album with a dozen tracks that shows a decent bit of variation but it might be a little bit on the long side, so some of those listening might grow a bit tired with the album before it ends.

Pretty good album, good quality songs all the way through, but there is this problem with everything being a bit on the familiar side, like Avenue which could just as well have been written by Parfitt and Rossi as by some youngsters from the redneck part of Sweden. They do what they do pretty well but as they don’t do it exceptionally well it is hard to claim that they are particularly relevant in the grand scheme of things. To me it also feels like it is too much written to be songs that should be played live rather than songs that are made to be as good as possible on a record. And I do believe they will work really well performed on the stage but as a critic I still have to be critical about such things.

All in all I think Marching On is a pretty good album, many music fans will enjoy the nostalgia and the familiarity of the songs – especially the live show visitors. The best songs are very good like Music Dictator, the Status Quo rip-off called Avenue and Bird Song which are songs that I really enjoy but as a whole the album is a bit too long and a bit too nostalgic to really impress a seasoned critic.

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