Photo by Jenny Källman
As announced last month, Stockholm’s Les Big Byrd will release their new album Diamonds, Rhinestonesand Hard Rain on March 1 via Chimp Limbs. Today, they release the second single and title track from the LP on all digital platforms, and a limited edition 7” exclusively available from the Chimp Limbs store.
“I was in my monthly meeting with my private clairvoyant, and she revealed to me that 2024 will be the year that guitar-based space-boogie music breaks through in a big way” explains Les Big Byrd’s frontman Jocke Åhlund. “I went directly to the studio to meet the guys, and wrote this undeniably catchy reverb-drenched John Lee Hooker inspired song.”
Diamonds, Rhinestones and Hard Rain is the fourth album from Les Big Byrd, the band consisting of Jocke Åhlund, Frans Johansson, Christian Olsson and Nino Keller. The new album features lyrics and song titles in both Swedish and English, but the most crucial language is its musical one, created by Åhlund and Johansson when they formed the band in 2011 and Åhlund took back control of the production side of things on 2022’s Eternal Light Brigade.
“I wanted to stay inside that bubble of creativity,” explains Åhlund, a legendary figure in the Swedish capital’s rock scene who’s also played in Caesars, Smile and Teddybears and has collaborated with everybody from Chrissie Hynde, Giorgio Moroder to Sonic Boom and Anton Newcombe. “I wanted to maintain a mood from start to finish.”
The band headed back to Visby’s Sandkvie Studio to cut tracks for Diamonds, Rhinestones and Hard Rain. With Åhlund bringing in the basis for the songs and the rest of the band helping to shape and flesh them out, musical trends began to appear, ones that would come to define the most varied record of the group’s career. Those in thrall to the spacier and more expansive side of the band’s output to date will find that itch scratched by epic psych slow-burners like ten-minute opener ‘Mareld’ and the monumental, Spiritualized-esque instrumental ‘Lycka Till På Färden’.
There is space as well for the other side of Les Big Byrd, the one driven by hooks and melody, alive in songs like the title track and ’Curved Light’, which take the sixties psych-rock tradition and tighten the screws on it, making it sharper, leaner and catcher. Underpinning everything is a thick sense of atmosphere, a beguiling, evocative mood that suggests that Åhlund has been successful in his quest to keep up a certain feeling throughout the record.
Pre-order Diamonds, Rhinestones and Hard Rain HERE
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