New York, NY (Top40 Charts) "Both songs ['Chorus/Raindrops'] display the Fricks' inimitable sense of melody and both stand with Moonbabies' best work." -Frank Valish - Under the Radar
The Moonbabies seven-year hiatus mimics Dorothy's story in The Wizard of Oz: a dreamlike state where she must overcome obstacles to find her way home. The Swedish husband and wife duo, Carina Johansson Frick and Ola Frick, found their ideal yellow brick road, allowing them to craft introspective pop-journeys through the collective unconscious while soaring through dreamy mindscapes of wonder and tapping into the electric pulse that unites us all.
Through the highs of success and the lows of an identity crisis resulting from it, they searched and rediscovered their core, that place of making nuanced music that is both personal and melodic without betraying their artistic sensibilities. Ola Frick, one-half of the Swedish duo elaborates, "I think this is something that is deeply needed in the rushed state of the world.
Music that's has a deep sense of colors and shades, meaningfulness, and making it without any sort of superficialities."
The Moonbabies started in 1997 in Malmö, Sweden as a shoegaze inspired band progressing steadily into the critically acclaimed 2004 sophomore release, The
Orange Billboard. According to Ola the album was somewhat modeled after Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot which was the blueprint for what they wanted to do. Take great songs and deconstruct and turn it inside out until it's more interesting, and mix it with lo-fi, electronic pop and experimentation. The
Orange Billboard broke the band in
Europe along with an extensive European tour. This led to the release of the mini album War On Sound with the title track being featured in its entirety on Grey's Anatomy. The track was an immediate indie anthem in Sweden and established the band internationally.
"Right up to that point we were in control.
Everything about Moonbabies had been one happy arrow pointing upwards and we were having fun doing it. We really loved Moonbabies," says Ola. "But for our third album we felt pressure to deliver songs that were commercially viable. Right there we also started to drift away from our own creative vision while damning ourselves for not staying completely true to our past playfulness."
So what do you do when you truly start to doubt yourself and feel no inspiration? Get out of your comfort zone. The duo moved to Berlin where they were incredibly inspired by the local house and dance scene. It was there they began moving the band in a new, more electronic direction representative of their surroundings. Although inspired, being in a new environment also presented its challenges. Ola says, "In Malmö we were the center of attention and walked with our heads held high, in Berlin we had to constantly prove ourselves, which in our case became counter-productive."
After two years in Berlin, they moved home to Sweden in 2009 and to the comforts of their old studio where they began again. Caught in a cycle where they continued to strive to overcome obstacles and simply push through, they began the album over 30 times without feeling they were making progress.
It was the birth of their son in 2013 that provided the catalyst for breeding new life into their creative process. The previous summer they decided they wanted to have children and they simply said "OK let's make an album of what we have! Cut away all bad memories and just focus on the songs that makes the hairs on your arms stand up." They took charge, switched back to their old equipment they knew well and went through loads of material. It was here they discovered bits and pieces they couldn't appreciate before and the warmth started to flow again.
In anticipation of their fourth full-length record due out in late spring 2015, the Moonbabies have released two new songs, "Chorus" and "
Raindrops", as their first of a series of digital double singles. Both songs are lyrically introspective with airy melodies invoking synesthesia-like hallucinatory ruminations. Carina describes "
Raindrops": "Lyrically it's about the state of those feverish dreams that feels so incredibly intense and real, that you either wake up screaming or crying. It's a mix of beauty and some deeper feeling that makes me feel slightly afraid at the same time." A reflection of their inspiration from nature, they write many of the songs at their cabin in the woods, consuming the grandeur of the wilderness without succumbing to its dark depths.
"We're extremely proud of the songs and the direction it took," Ola reflects. "It's something that we feel is unique and interesting and experimental, but in its core is all about being honest and pure and doing music that speaks to yourself." The Moonbabies are back in Technicolor vision and "through all hellfire" are better and more dynamic than ever.
Praise for Moonbabies
"Moonbabies do it their way, from start to finish, with astoundingly assured results." —Jon Langmead - Pop Matters
"Sweden's Moonbabies has been making sweet indie-pop music since the late '90s. Its 2004 album, The
Orange Billboard, still stands as one of the best albums the genre may have ever seen...Both songs ['Chorus/Raindrops'] display the Fricks' inimitable sense of melody and both stand with Moonbabies' best work." [10/9/2014] —Frank Valish - Under the Radar
"Seriously, boy/girl harmonies and they're Swedes. It's a lock, I'm in. This is the Moonbabies third album and it may be the one to get them some serious Stateside pub" —My Old Kentucky Blog
"I almost fell off my chair when I found out Moonbabies were coming to New York for CMJ. I became aware of them after the stellar 'The
Orange Billboard', one of 2004's most underrated albums. It typifies Moonbabies' sound, which mixes classic pop sensibilities (and Frick and Johansson's lovely harmonies) with dips into electronics and shoegazer-ish dreaminess."—Bill Pearis - Brooklyn Vegan
"Moonbabies deftly mix the accessible and the bizarre, assembling marvelously eclectic but still coherent pop." —Peter Gerstenzang - Spin Magazine
"Engaging various degrees of electronica and guitar-pop with slow, engaging tempos and vocal harmonies, Moonbabies have crystallized another fine pop album. Moonbabies employ a wide variety of tempos and textures on the album, and they're all done with impressive precision." —Chris Force -QRO Magazine
"Bursts forth as a perfectly chiseled pop confection complete with sing-along chorus to lodge its infectious melodic spike firmly in the back of your brain." —Dave Gurney - Tiny Mix Tapes
