Division of Laura Lee

Ah, to be young and Swedish and in a rock-and-roll band. Now that the Hives are on the radio, pushing Scandinavian rock to the Man has never been so easy. This fall, Universal is reissuing the Soundtrack of Our Lives' classic-rocking Behind the Music, which I've already raved about in these pages (the band hit the Paradise in Boston on November 4); Epitaph is bringing out Division of Laura Lee's nocturnal Black City (they play the Met Cafe this Sunday); and the mega-indie Jetset is issuing Jennie Bomb, a sweet-tarty riot by Sweden's answer to the Donnas, Sahara Hotnights (who'll be at the Met on October 23.)

There are a couple of great Repeater-era Fugazi-type songs on Black City. The first shock of Swedish punk rock is the shamelessness with which Swedes imitate their influences. The second comes once you've heard a disc a couple of times and you start wondering whether the imitators haven't outdone the original. Black City's title track, with its skewed angles suddenly converging at an anthemic point of attack, could be a "Merchandise" for the Internet age. If "Second Rule Is" isn't the phantom twin of "Waiting Room," it's damn close, and I've never heard a better bloody-throated Ian MacKaye impersonation. This isn't the only thing DOLL do well, but it is what they do best.

DOLL come from the Swedish tradition embodied by Refused, and more recently the International Noise Conspiracy -- bands who have picked up the thread of earnest, progressive post-hardcore where Nation of Ulysses and the Make-Up left off. (The next time I hear DOLL compared to the Stooges, I'm going to make the offender eat the unexpurgated seven-disc Fun House sessions.) Competing claims to the contrary, there's only one song on Black City that sounds even remotely like the Hives; that said, the song in question, "Number One," sounds almost exactly like "Main Offender" -- that is, if the Hives were fronted by Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto.

Black City was produced by TSOOL bassist Kalle Gustavsson, who brings the full TSOOL arsenal of classic-rock tricks and transforms the disc from Fugazi homage into a reconciliation between feral American post-punk and moody British pop. You can't get much more Behind the Music than DOLL's "I Guess I'm Healed," which is all acid-Stones psych-rock, slow and stoned with "Sympathy for the Devil"-style bongo backbeats. Completists will recognize the two-minute interlude "I Walk on Broken Glass," a disquieting whisper of funereal organ swell and cheap piano plink, as a close relative to TSOOL's Barrett-esque fragment "In Someone Else's Mind." But if Black City brings more popcraft and psychedelic swirl and shimmery bite to Dischord-style post-punk than the entire Jade Tree catalogue, that's partly because DOLL have also been sampling UK mega-retropop -- Primal Scream, Spacehog, the Jesus and Mary Chain. You'd expect a song called "The Truth Is Fucked" to be a Fugazi ripoff no matter who the band is, but in fact the DOLL track buzzes with epic Stone Roses/Oasis-style spectral majesty. And if that sounds like an anachronism, the place "Trapped In" is trapped in appears to be Kevin Shields's basement circa 1988. If what people used to call "emo" (as opposed to what passes for it now) had ever become massively popular, it might've sounded like this.

Sahara Hotnights

If Black City evokes a long, brooding Scandinavian winter of discontent, Sahara Hotnights' fabulous Jennie Bomb seems minted in the image of a cruel Swedish summer: sudden, harshly bright, over too soon. Formed almost a decade ago, the all-female foursome spent their teenage years mining girl grunge (Hole, PJ Harvey, Cranberries) for Swedish Grammys. But save for a vestigial hint of singer/guitarist Maria Andersson's PJ fixation on a couple of tunes, you'd never know that from Jennie Bomb, a giddy, carefree, ebullient romp through Sweden's signature hard-rock/glam-punk back alleys that sounds for all the world like the Runaways maxing out their charge cards on Bananarama's luscious girl-gang harmonies. The shout-along opener, "Alright Alright (Here's My Fist Where's the Fight?)," and their soaring, '80s-metal homage "On Top of Your World" establish their priorities: nothing more vexing than fast times and shouting out loud, with maybe a little misdemeanor lawbreaking on the side. Whether they're playing cheap tricks on the Kiss catalogue à la the Hellacopters -- yes, that's the "God of Thunder" lick at the beginning of "Fall into Line" -- or taking the Clash to the Clinique counter on "Are You Happy Now?," they're never less than electrifying.

Division of Laura Lee play the Met Cafe this Sunday, October 5. Sahara Hotnights play the Met Cafe on Wednesday, October 23. Call (401) 861-2142.

Issue Date: October 4 - 10, 2002