STOCKHOLM’S lovely Last Days of April, with singer and guitarist Karl Larsson the ever-present guiding light, are firing into their quarter-century anniversary year with a tenth album of high-octane guitar pop fun in June: eight songs that look a life with a bittersweet, fuzzy melody, entitled Even The Good Days Are Bad.
Today they’ve dropped the proud-but-vulnerable indie dancefloor banger “Alone”, which sits in a fine Scandinavian indiepop tradition and seems to pick up where The Wannadies left off when they went on hiatus.
It’s a classic of the form, pretty much; a little sad, but singalong catharsis at its core. Was it intended that way?
“No, not consciously,” says Karl. “I only try and make the songs as I hear them in my head. I always think I’m onto something new with every record, but I’ll take ‘timeless’ and ‘classic.’”
Sessions for Even The Good Days Are Bad began as far back as 2019, with Karl being joined by his trusty compatriots, drummer Magnus Olsson and bassist Rikard Lidhamn for a two-day marathon recording session at Stockholm’s lStudio Gröndahl.
Karl had penned a clutch of new material for the sessions and also dusted down a few tracks dating back to the turn of the century.
“We recorded everything in Gröndahl to tape,” Karl says. “All analogue and tons of outboard. Classic stuff, you know … I’m a gear nut.” He then brought the recordings home to overdub and a little finishing stardust.
And then a new virus waved hello at the world, and suddenly, when Karl sang those mantric lines like “When I wake up I feel alone / When I go to bed I feel alone,” the song was suddenly foretelling the new order of things.
“Let it bring whatever feelings it brings,” Karl says of Even The Good Days Are Bad: “It sounds best played loud.”
Last Days of April’s Even The Good Days Are Bad will be released by Tapete Records digitally, on CD and on vinyl on June 11th and is available to pre-order now over at Bandcamp.
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