Album Review: Youth by Simian Ghost

While listening to the title track off Simian Ghost’s second album, ‘Youth’, you might well find yourself quickly writing off Sandviken native Sebastian Arnström as a Swedish Fleet Fox. You would, however, be a bit of an arse to tar him with that beardy, bristly folk brush.Y’see, that track’s obvious vocal comparison to Robin Pecknold aside, its Animal Collective bleep-pop is just one of heaps of interesting nuances in his sound, from the Washed Out chillwave vibe of ‘Automation’ to the excellent ‘The Capitol’, on which he narrows the fretboard for some nice Bloc Party-esque guitarlines. There’s a smorgasbord of top tunes here.[i]Jamie Crossan[/i] .

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Micro genres come and go. Chillwave, 2009-2010’s big buzzword, has unsurprisingly melted down. Where bloggers hailed the likes of Toro Y Moi and Washed Out as chillwave’s finest, these artists have progressively distanced themselves from the genre they helped innovate.Swedes Simian Ghost were pigeonholed into the chillwave genre with last year’s ‘Lovelorn’ EP.

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Second album of perfect pop from Scandinavian trio. Paul Lester 2012 It could reasonably be argued that the Scandinavians are better than anyone right now at pure pop, and indeed have excelled at it ever since exponents of the form from Annie to The Cardigans made sweet melodies and infectious rhythms a national – or rather, transnational – speciality. Simian Ghost are quintessential Scandi-poppers, with their bright and breezy summer music for a chart that no longer appears to be open to such things, their highly polished surfaces, sugar-coated choruses and breathy vocals that sound not so much androgynous as exquisitely sexless.

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