I'm From Barcelona
by Grant Moser
March 2007
The story goes like this: This kid in Sweden (Emanuel Lundgren) writes a couple of explosive happy pop songs and gets his friends (all twenty-nine of them) to help record them. This homemade EP strikes a chord and twenty thousand people download the songs from the band’s website. So here’s their follow-up: Let Me Introduce My Friends. Think: the Partridge Family meets the Violent Femmes—happy, bouncy, and utterly infectious. The songs range from daily observations on oversleeping (“Damn, I can’t believe I did it again / I can make it in time if I jump out of bed”) to stamp collecting (“I can’t believe I’m telling everyone I know / That every stamp in my collection is a place we can go”) to having the chicken pox (“You can’t have it once you had it”)—and every single song has a soaring, sing-along chorus that you can’t resist. It sounds corny, but it’s so not; you’ll be singing along on the first listen. The songs feel like they’re being sung just to you, and you’re happy to be included. “Please press my rec and play / ’Cause I want to save this moment /_ This will be my favorite song / This will be my favorite album.” Happy happy, joy joy.