Review: 'No Mythologies To Follow' by MØ

If you've been following my blog lately, you've probably figured out that I like the Danish indie pop songstress MØ quite a bit. So, it's about time I took a proper look at her debut LP No Mythologies To Follow. Without further ado, let's get down to it!

The original version of the album comprises twelve tracks, while the deluxe edition (which is the one available on Spotify) features four bonus tunes plus four alternative versions of the new album tracks, one remix, and her Spice Girls cover "Say You'll Be There". With even the ordinary version clocking at 44 minutes, the deluxe edition is clearly quite the package.

Before the album came out, I was concerned with one particular fact: out of the 12 tracks on the initial version of the album, six ("Pilgrim", "Waste of Time", "Never Wanna Know", "XXX 88", "Glass", "Maiden") had been already released in advance in one format or another, four as (then) stand-alone singles. Now, they're all killer tunes for sure, but with the album relying so heavily on 'older' (=previously heard) material, the new stuff has to be extremely good to be on a par. So, the first time I put the record on, I was really nervous - how will the record fare as an entity?

New music videos from Lana Del Rey, MØ, Jon Hopkins

There's some new music videos I'd like to share with you guys so let's get on with it!

First of all, we've got Lana Del Rey with her (apparently) latest single "Shades of Cool", one of my favourites from her new album Ultraviolence (expect a review in the near future). Musically it - along with the rest of the LP - represents a slightly more minimal direction for her, but the video is every bit as Lana-esque than anything we've seen before: there's smoking and dancing in slow-motion, there's an older man as her love interest, there's rows of palm trees, there's driving in a fancy convertible and yes, there's even the good ol' Stars and Stripes. Much American, such Lana, so wow. We're hardly speaking of a proper reinvention here but oh well, the song's quite amazing nonetheless.

Then there's the incredible Danish indie pop sensation MØ with her latest single "Walk This Way", taken from her 2014 debut album No Mythologies To Follow. I've still yet to review it but spoiler alert: it's good. Directed as a collaboration with the i-D magazine, the music video is a high school-themed romp and portrays MØ as a bubblegum-chewing queen bee of her high school athlete posse. The clip also takes MØ's trademark ponytail to a whole new level.





I've been totally obsessed with this singer ever since I saw her live last year, and it's starting to look like she's just about to break through internationally, too - she's been touring the States, getting a lot of media attention and even appearing on national TV! Check out her performances of "Pilgrim" and "Don't Wanna Dance" on Jimmy Kimmel Live!:









Mark my words, she's going to be huge. Such a promising talent, and she puts on an amazing, batshit crazy show, too!

And lastly, we've got Jon Hopkins with a new version of his amazing tune We Disappear from his latest album Immunity. Featuring the soulful vocals of Lulu James, it's an interesting take on the song. Her gorgeous voice complements the song beautifully, but in my opinion, the track's original, instrumental version was hypnotic and captivating in ways that this one isn't. Perhaps that's the magic of instrumental music: it allows the listener to project more of their own interpretation and imagination onto the composition. Still, the new version is stunning in its own way, and the combination of James's organic, classical vocals and Hopkins's futuristic glitch-hop arrangements make a fascinating juxtaposition.

MØ's debut album 'No Mythologies to Follow' is now out!

Few recent pop musicians have excited me quite as much as the Danish indie sensation MØ, and her music has been often featured in my blog as you might have noticed. But it's all for a reason - her music's simply just that amazing. And after an EP and a string of singles, her debut album No Mythologies to Follow is finally out! It's available on both iTunes and Amazon among others, and can also be streamed on Spotify (you can do that below).

And what a fine album it is - certainly one of the best releases of the year so far! It's sounding very solid overall, with the new material just as infectious as the previously heard songs. Expect a more detailed review sometime in the near future.

Meanwhile, do yourself a favour and check the album out:

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's the 14th of February and you know what that means - Valentine's Day is upon us. You're already probably so sick of all the saccharine posts and romantic sentimentality in the realms of social media and television etc. And then if you don't have someone special to share this 'magical day' with, you're either deemed a desperate loser or a pathetic hermit incapable of human emotion.

It's not like that everywhere in the world, though! In Finland and Estonia we don't celebrate Valentine's Day as such, but we rather call it ystävänpäivä or sõbrapäev, respectively, which would translate to "friend's day". So instead of commemorating romances and people's desperate quest for avoiding loneliness, we celebrate having friends and spending time together with them. Much less exclusive, much more fun! Although the effect of the ubiquitous American culture has inevitably influenced the day, turning it more and more pink and heart-filled. (Speaking of hearts, you might as well check out my heart-themed playlist - fear not, it's not that schmaltzy.)

As a Valentine's Day gift for her fans, the Danish indie popper MØ has recorded and released a cover of Spice Girls' 1996 single "Say You'll Be There". (Don't even get started - compared to a lot of stuff dominating the charts these days, Spice Girls were just fine.) And it gets even better - you can download it for free! 

And here's the original version and its music video, with Mel C - I mean "Katrina Highkick" - being as badass as always, throwing high kicks and backflips in the middle of a desert. As you do.

MØ's latest single now has a music video to it

The music video to MØ's latest single "Don't Wanna Dance" has been released. The Motown-esque tune is now accompanied with a clip that features MØ holding a deer fawn in a forest, writhing on a colourful retro sofa and dancing about in a scrapyard ('cause why not?) both at normal speed and in slowmo. Or would that be in... slowmø?

*ba-dum-tss*

Anyway, take a look at it:

The song is really growing on me, actually. The single cover does remind me a lot of that of Santigold's debut album though. Surely it's not just me? Or maybe it's just that glitter puke has become a 'thing' while I've been away. Hmm.

MØ shares teaser of new single 'Don't Wanna Dance'

MØ, the Danish indie popper who I've been lately a bit obsessed with, shared a brief teaser of her upcoming single "Don't Wanna Dance" on her Instagram page. It's the first single to be released from her No Mythologies To Follow LP which is apparently out on 10t of March, if her Facebook cover photo is to be believed. (Originally the released date was announced to be February 24 so the date must've been postponed.) The song seems to be much less urban-sounding than her previous singles "XXX 88" and "Waste of Time" and more retro-ish (in the style of another single, "Never Wanna Know"), complete with a '60s Motown beat. The song will debut on BBC Radio 1 in two days, on 16th, so expect to hear the full version soon on YouTube or Spotify or Soundcloud or what have you. And if the teaser leaves you wanting for more, you can tease yourself further with the album sampler she released a while ago.

That's all.





Edit. Here's the track! Quite lovely, is it not?

MØ shares album sampler, it sounds excellent

Danish indie pop sensation MØ has her debut LP No Mythologies To Follow coming out in less than two months and now she's treated us with an album sampler! And yes, it's sounding very promising indeed. I'm still a bit 'bovvered' though about how large part of the album consists of songs that have been already released but it doesn't really make the tracks any less brilliant, now does it. Also, the brief snippets taken from the unreleased songs sound equally exciting so this should certainly be an album to be reckoned with. So, while you're waiting for the real deal, do check out the sampler below!

And if such teasing left you craving for more, check out "XXX 88", MØ's collaboration with Diplo - it's amazing and will appear on the album as well! Furthermore, make sure you go see her if she comes to perform somewhere near you - she does put on one hell of a show. (You can find her tour dates here.)

Popheaval's Best of 2013: #20-11.

The end of the year is drawing near and you know what that means - best of lists! Yay, amirite? (Also, this is my 100th blog post! This calls for celebration.) And no music blogger would be credible without one of their own so... here's mine. It certainly wasn't an easy task to try and narrow down the best songs of a whole year into a set amount, let alone rank them. I was considering all these different kinds of brackets to do the job for me but ultimately ended up with an unbribable scoreboard (THAT TOOK AGES TO FILL). And of course I forgot to save it and then accidentally deleted the whole thing, having to do it all over again...

Phew, it sure took some time. And innumerable replays of songs. The face-offs were tough, but here's the final results. Lists like this are obviously highly subjective since they are merely a matter of personal taste (I didn't give two fucks about chart positions or commercial success). I have also probably missed a myriad of excellent songs - I've spent the whole past year discovering amazing songs from 2012 that I had totally overlooked in my last year's list. Furthermore, in order to prevent the list from becoming too monotonous and consisting of multiple songs from same artists/albums, I chose to use only one song/main artist.

There will also be another post on special mentions, but here's the first part of my final list with the final order - are you ready?

Here we go!

MØ announces debut album

The Danish up-and-coming pop songstress - whom I had the pleasure of seeing perform last week - has revealed new details about her forthcoming debut album! As you can see from the picture above, uploaded yesterday by MØ herself on her Facebook page, the album will be called No Mythologies To Follow and it will be out on the 24th of February. We now have a tracklist as well, and it is as follows:

"Fire Rides"

"Maiden"

"Never Wanna Know"

"Red in the Grey"

"Pilgrim"

"Don't Wanna Dance"

"Waste of Time"

"Dust Is Gone"

"XXX 88 (feat. Diplo)"

"Walk This Way"

"Slow Love"

"Glass"

"No Mythologies to Follow"

"Dummy Head

"The Sea"

"Gone and Found"

"Fire Rides (Night Version)"

"Dust Is Gone (Night Version)"

"Slow Love (Night Version)"

"The Sea (Night Version)"

Phew. As you might suspect, that'll be the tracklist of the deluxe edition - the "ordinary" version will be shorter, omitting the last eight tracks. It sounds plausible with the four alternative 'Night Version' thingies but to leave the title track off the album? Now that is a rather curious thing to do. Oh, and you can pre-order the Deluxe edition here while the regular one can be found here. You're welcome.

Another thing you might notice about the tracklist is that it includes many songs we've heard before: her debut single "Pilgrim" makes an appearance, and so do two other singles "Waste of Time" and "Glass" plus one half of the Bikini Daze EP ("XXX 88" and "Never Wanna Know"). That is to say, almost half of the 'normal' version of the album (5 tracks out of 12) will be songs that we've already heard before. That is not a negative thing per se, but the new songs must really be good enough to not be overshadowed by the older ones (well, "older" as in "released earlier this year"). I'm sure they will be brilliant, though, and I believe I did in fact hear a couple of the unreleased songs at the gig.

Anyway, what a promising week for exciting album news! First Band of Skulls, now MØ! And it's only Wednesday today...

Went to see MØ yesterday, she was INSANE.

And when I say 'insane', I mean brilliantly insane in the best of ways. Not being overly familiar with her music I didn't really know what to expect but whatever I might had been expecting, she topped it big time. The gig was a blast, and here's my two pennies on it.

The gig was held at Musikhuset Posten in Odense, Denmark, with MØ (I'm not sure about the capitalisation so I'll just stick with the one used on Last.fm, my holy Bible of music) being supported by Sekuoia, a glitch-hop project of Copenhagen-based Patrick Alexander Bech-Madsen. I kind of missed the warm-up gig due to arriving late, though. I did manage to see the band's last song or two and while the music was interesting, it wasn't necessarily the best possible choice to open up for MØ - whereas the latter was zestful music to dance to, the former plays much calmer stuff, something you'd rather just chill out to. Outside of the context of a concert, however, Sekuoia's music is quite nice and relaxing - you might want to check his music out. "Evenings" is a personal favourite of mine.






But it was of course MØ that we were there for. While waiting for her gig to begin, I couldn't help noticing the huge amount of high ponytails, braids and hair buns in the audience - a probable reference to the singer's trademark hairstyle. Then again, this is Denmark and I'm starting to believe girls are actually born with their hair tied on a high bun as it tends to be the dominant female hairstyle here (as pointed out by Tumblr user Copenhannah in her hilarious post on how to look like a Dane). Another thing that I found particularly lovely was the diversity of the audience: while the majority obviously consisted of twenty-something hip concert-goers, there always seems to be the occasional older attender or two (or as in this case, like a dozen of them). This is a wonderful phenomenon I've noticed on several occasions, for example when going to that Porcelain Raft gig in Copenhagen a while ago. It's always great to see good music blur the lines between different segments and simply bring people together to enjoy it.