CITY SAINTS [Oi! Street Punk, Sweden]
City Saints has been kicking ass for the working class since 2013. By adding some good ol’ fashioned rock’n’roll to their punky attitude, the gang from Gothenburg, Sweden has been hailed internationally and shared the stage with many of their influences, like Cock Sparrer and Sham 69, to name but a few.
Now, after four critical acclaimed albums in English, City Saints explore a new avenue as they are releasing a whole album in Swedish. Funnily enough, the seed was planted on the other side of the Atlantic.
“We recorded a track in Swedish which ended up on our last album ‘Guns of Gothenburg’”, lead vocalists Stefan Johansson says. The song ‘Passa Dig!’ was done mostly for fun and was an excuse to sing a duet with Blomman from Swedish band Troublemakers. But after reading a review from the States where the writer reacted quite euphorically over this particular song, and wanted a whole album in our native language, we began contemplating the idea. We decided it could be fun to try something new and take a little detour and do a full album in Swedish. After all, City Saints is all about having fun.”
Said and done. True to form, City Saints wrote, rehearsed and recorded “Pรฅ svenska” (“In Swedish”) in no time at all. As always, spontaneity was the key word for the band. For the first time they cut songs in the classic Gothenburg studio Music-A-Matic, where renowned producer Chips Kiesbye has worked with everyone from The Hellacopters to Graveyard over the years. Chips has been a long-time fan of City Saints and was excited to work with the band, producing “Pรฅ svenska”.
”What one might not know is that it’s actually Chips who handles lead guitar on one of our old classics – ’Kicking Ass For the Working Class’ from our debut album”, Stefan says. ”He has come to plenty of our shows over the years and we’re proud that he often wears our shirts. It was about time he got to do an album with us.”
Chips shortened the already short songs even more in order to get to the core. All bed-tracks were then completed in a day. Then the concern was to find the right attitude in the vocals.
“Chips had me do eight takes of every song”, Stefan says. “We have never worked that methodically before. It was all about finding the right accent and emphasize the right words to make it sound as strong as it possibly could. I thought it would be more difficult to sing in Swedish than in English, but actually it was the opposite. It was fun to play around with words and it was easier to get the humour across.”
A bunch of friends ended up doing guest spots on the album. Beside Chips, Hasse Gรคfvert from Sator is heard on piano and keyboards. Tomas Modig from Swedish cult act P-Nissarna is singing back-up and Arild Hanssen from Troublemakers is doing a solo on one of the tracks. Blomman is present once again, doing a duet on “Parasiter”.
“Pรฅ svenska” bursts of energy and offers hook after hook after hook. A big effort has been put into making the backing vocals sound as big as possible, but the music is as always very much to the point. “Pรฅ svenska” is a no-frills record, which is apparent in the basic album title and the succinct songs as well as in the one-word song titles. Yet everything about “Pรฅ svenska” is substantial. City Saints continues to show why they are a unique act. In the year of 2019, nothing sounds like “Pรฅ svenska”.
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