Trad, Gras Och Stenar
Homeless Cats
Just in time for Trad Gras och Stenar (Trees Grass and Stones) 40-year anniversary the Swedish psychedelic trance-rock pioneers releases a new album - Homeless Cats. The first one in seven years and the seventh since the singing start in 1969. Eleven new boundless tracks with organic music for open minds. It was recorded by the band themselves during the period 2002-2007, mostly under jam-like forms in the bands rehearsal house and studio but also live at gigs. Trad Gras och Stenar have evolved a clear and mature sound with space enough for both suggestive heaviness and mind-expanded searching. The eleven new tracks bubbles and seethe. The band members (including Reine Fiske of DUNGEN on guitar) build soundscapes all together where the music is allowed to grow forth freely in compositions like "The Railway Engine of the People in Irresistible Motion", "Don't Fear the Northern Lights" and "The Unexpected Encounter in the Mushroom Forest". Sometimes the mostly instrumental tracks are irresistibly captivating, like in the trance dancing "Summer Disco". As well as evolving seemingly weightless, like when the loop-like "The Most Beautiful Moment of the Dream" breathtakingly floats in to "Thorns of Solitude". It could be a movie soundtrack. Or earthy space rock. The song "Wedding Reel" diverges from traditional ways of playing Swedish folk music. The rhythm and melody is racked almost brutally in a hard duel. Like a plow in turbo tractor pace wrenches deep furrows in the stone field. Homeless Cats makes its mark. Heavy, at the same time vertiginous. Timeless. TGS have lost non of their spark. on the contrary and that is why the band is still touring worldwide. had they been an arena type band that would not have meant anything but in the underground scene people are not so forgiving and to survive there you got to be good.real good. and this new TGS album is their best by far. for the first time the whole mindblowing live sets have been translated in to an album.much like the Deads "Anthem of the Sun". I mean these guys are pushing 70 and are still playing the US cost to cost in a small van, toruing Japan sleeping in small unheated temples on mountain tops. they are still living on the edge and playing like it really means something to them. in fact they are playing as their lives depended on it.and it really does.