Singer-songwriter Anders Callenberg is a self-professed lo-fi enthusiast with a keen penchant for Krautrock. His second album, following up 2012’s ‘Pretentious Bastard’ finds Callenberg meandering around in a sea of doodly synths and vintage drum machine sounds, and while the influences of Kraftwerk, Spacemen 3 and Magnetic Fields are all quite apparent, he’s kidding himself if he thinks he sounds like Tom Waits.
Callenberg’s vocals are a shade shaky-sounding and don’t always hold the tune, but lo-fi fans aren’t all that concerned about such minor technicalities. They probably won’t be too fussed about the off-the-cuff lyrics, either: ‘there’s a shark in that pool I didn’t see / I wonder what it will do to me / what do you know it’s just / a sitting duck?’ In fairness, Callenberg can pen a nifty tune and ‘The Bailout Shop’ has no shortage of whimsical pop moments.
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‘Twelve Hours’ finds him delivering his lyrics in a flat Bernard Sumner-like drone over a backing reminiscent of The Human League’s ‘Being Boiled’ crossed with something Krawftwerkian. The laid-back country of consecutive tracks‘The Balloon Song’ and ‘You Sailed Alone’ feels rather incongruous even with Callenberg’s leaning toward singer-songwriterly tropes which keep his experimentalism in check.
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