Canada + Sweden = What's not to like?

If you look at Pitchfork's albums of the year-lists from the past five years, and where the artists hail from, two countries would probably strike you as being overrepresented in comparison to their population, and those countries would be Canada and Sweden. Those two countries are represented 16 and 14 times respectively, together constituting 12% of the albums the world's leading music media have singled out as being defining for the years 2006-2010. Even more impressively, there's a Swedish album in the top 10 in both 2006, 2007 and 2009, with The Knife of course taking home the grand prize at #1 with Silent Shout in 2006, the only non-American #1 in period.


So what happens when you take a sort-of under-the-radar Canadian indie-electronic outfit and set up a Skype connection with a producer in Gothenburg, Sweden? Well, in the case of Young Galaxy and Dan Lissvik, the result is pretty marvelous - thank you Skype!


I have been raving about both 'Cover Your Tracks' and 'We Have Everything' for a few months, but Young Galaxy's new album, Shapeshifting, which I got last week, has - and what a relief! - proven to be much more than that. By way of the Junior Boys-reminiscent opener 'The Angels Are Surely Weeping', the slightly more urgently sounding 'Blown Minded' and the above-mentioned 'We Have Everything', the album comes off to a rocket start. 


While the album does dip a wee bit after that, Catherine McCandless' warm and charismatic vocal work, combined with Lissvik's sophisticated, soothing 80's-inspired production, makes sure Shapeshifting has its listener firmly in its heaving grasp throughout. Another standout track is the funky 'Peripheral Visionaries', which intelligently mixes McCandless' voice with guitarist Stephen Ramsey's elegant croon, not at all unlike The xx. Ramsey impresses throughout the album with neat and appropriate, often reverb-laden, guitar work too. 


One could have feared that an album like this would drown in pathos, but thanks to the dry and tightly cut production, only the two last tracks sporadically lose themselves in over pompousness. As I mentioned earlier, the Junior Boys-references are visible, but influences from the opposite site of the Atlantic are clearly traceable too, such as 'Phantoms', which could sound like The Knife in a soft moment.


I have always believed there is something artistically inspiring in long, bright summer evenings and dark, endless winter nights that occur in both Canada and Sweden, and Shapeshifting is the newest member of this club of high sky euphony.