What’s this? The brand-new album from Swedish duo Smith & Thell – their second album to date – ‘Pixie’s Parasol’.
What’s on it? It’s packed with so many stonking great radio hits, it almost reads like a Best Of! It features their singles ‘Forgive Me Friend’, ‘Hotel Walls’, ‘Goliath’, ‘Year Of The Young’ and ‘Radioactive Rain’, two songs they’ve carried forward from their ‘Telephone Wires’ EP, plus three brand-new songs.
What are the new songs like? ‘Nangilima’ is already sounding like their next goliath radio and streaming smash (and they released a music video for it yesterday). And long may it reign through 2021. ‘Yatzy’, meanwhile, is the album’s heart-breaker – once you realise what it’s about (and they allude to it in their quote below). That final line is a real gut-punch moment.
Sounds like they’ve put together quite the album! Smith & Thell are two of the most talented songwriters and producers that Sweden has ever produced. This is album is, quite rightly, a victory lap through what currently feels like their imperial phase. Although obviously, we hope and expect them to continue to fly higher and higher.
What do they say? “All together, ‘Pixie’s Parasol’ has been in the making for over three years. A lot has happened since we released our first album, ‘Soulprints’. That album barely had any listeners at first, but over time people seem to have found us and seem to continue to find us through those songs. Since the release of ‘Soulprints’, we’ve grown up and become less like teenagers and more like adults. Our career took off, we’ve toured for months on end, we have gone from being a couple to becoming best friends, we’ve won a Swedish Grammy, and we have gone through the devastating loss of loved ones. All this while, the music has held us together, both as individuals and as a unit. ‘Soulprints’ celebrated life’s ups and downs, the rollercoaster we’re all on in this world. The new one might be an even wilder ride, one maybe best described as bipolar. With one song written in a trailer backstage at a sunny festival in California, and another beside a hospital bed watching someone we loved dearly fade away. Songwriting is our diary, and life decides which songs are to be written. And maybe it’s no wonder that this album asks the big questions about life and death. And no wonder we’re a little lost in space now and named the album after a psychedelic mushroom, and wrote songs about cars driving through galaxies. After all, there’s a little virus going around that has given us even more time to get caught up in big thoughts. But a few of the songs you’ll have to wait for a little longer. To those of you who were patient enough to read this all the way through, we can tell you that this is only the beginning of the album ’Pixie’s Parasol’.”
You can find both ‘Nangilima’ and ‘Radioactive Rain’ on our Best New Pop playlist.
