Who says long-distance relationships don’t work? When they released their debut album Demons in 2005, the members of Envelopes were living variously in Stockholm, Malmo and Paris. Somehow they managed to scrabble together enough time during school holidays to record their songs. We should rejoice at their persistence, that they refused to bow to geography, for three years on they’ve delivered a second album, Here Comes The Wind, that is a sumptuous miracle. Feral these songs roam, chasing us with their loose-limbed melodies, snapping at our ears with their frisky guitar and resolute rhythms.
Rollicking opener ‘Party’ betrays the band’s love of the Pixies, Henrik Orrling and Audrey Pic doing the alternating boy/girl vocals thing, Ulf Höglund pumping the bass full of amp-humping menace and the guitars buzzing like bees around a discarded soft drink can. In addition they’ve even worked in a reference to poodle-haired warbler supreme Bonnie Tyler: “Once upon a time I was falling in love / now I’m only falling apart / totally fucked from the start.” Amazing.
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Here Comes the Wind shares some of the same features. There are some brilliant pop songs like the post-punk agit-pop of ‘Freejazz’, where Audrey advises “make things happen/ provoke them!” ‘Smoke in the Desert, Eating the Sand, Hide in the Grass’ is life-enriching, combining more hooks than Abu Hamza’s spare parts store with a filthy, meandering bassline and shouty vocals. ‘Party’ has constantly itchy rhythms and is full of glossy pop splinters woven together, though I wonder if it was worth splitting the writing credit with Jim Steinman just so they could create the Bonnie Tyler pun: “totally fucked from the start”.
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