Team Me - Team Me

Team Me could make it way too easy to indulge in Scandinavian band cliché. Man it’s tempting to throw a ‘there must be something in the fjords’ here to express a bafflement as to how the region keeps churning out such wonderful music. And when faced with the often grandiose nature of this record how are you meant to avoid referencing mountains, glaciers and the occasional tundra? I guess we could just stick to something vaguely resembling fact and straight description rather than indulge in flighty metaphor?

Let’s not be lazy either, let’s not compare them to Arcade Fire just because they do epic rise-and-fall, soaring chorused triumphant indierock. There’s no need for that because, for starters, it’s not like Arcade Fire invented the sound, they just chased it down, trying to find its glorious conclusion. And also unlike, say, The Kissaway Trail (yes, more Scandinavians, clever stuff eh?) this is not Xeroxed replication. Team Me do more than enough to distinguish themselves, to blaze their own trail. They infuse these songs with a sense of landscape, with an almost folky identity that roots this music firmly in their Norwegian roots, which makes it entirely theirs.

Kennedy Street is the most subdued track on the EP, it’s slow, soothing and kind of comforting musically but the lyrics betray the gloom at its heart; ‘plans I make never happen anyway’ sums up the beaten inertia, and when the crescendo finally kicks in it’s got a shadowy, lurking, entirely uncomfortable feel to it.

This music-happy-lyrics-less-so element seeps through the record, in ‘Weathervanes And Chemicals’ and ‘Come Down’ especially there’s a recurring theme, sometimes implied, sometimes more implicit of drug-fuelled detachment, cautionary tales about the impossibility to interact properly and be part of what’s happening around you when you’re not in control of yourself. And all this is enveloped in the most uplifting music; the giant sighing choruses enriched with glittering keyboard and the occasional yelped ‘WOO’.

‘Dear Sister’ is probably the standout track, it is the most intricate, nuanced offering. It recalls the very best Loney, Dear can muster, invokes downbeat despair and giddy optimism within the first ten seconds and holds off from the Big Chorus until Exactly.The.Right.Moment. It’s a majestic song, and a real ‘yeah, we’re Team Me, we’re here’ statement. Scandinavia, you’ve done it again.