Today I had my first encounter with Lampshade, a Scandinavian post-rock/shoegaze band. They’ve recently released a new EP, called “Stop Pause Play“, after their two full length albums “Because Trees Can Fly” and “Let’s Away“.

They remind me of a Danish band, called Under Byen (“Under the City”), which I was listening to quite obsessively last winter. From my point of view, post-rock is a genre typical to the cold season and, let’s say, to autumn too. I had the tendency to go through shady streets while it was raining or snowing with Under Byen in my headphones as a “depression fix”.

If you’re going to look for them on Wikipedia – as I do from time to time -, stop right now! You won’t find anything about Lampshade over there. As I noticed on their Myspace page, they are now based in Malmo, Sweden and the band consists of Rebekka Maria Andersson, Adam Jacobsson, Johannes Dybkjær Andersson and Erik Nylén, after they’ve changed the band line-up for a few times.

I got all their albums today and started listening to their debut album, “Because Trees Can Fly” (released in 2004),  from which you can listen the eponymous song in the embedded video. The songs have a tendency to start in a melancholic mood, while the end is more aggressive. You know that feeling a few caffeine shots after a long sleep gives you, the one that shakes you pretty hard? Ok, that’s the same feeling you’ll get when you’ll reach the end of those songs.

Sometimes, the singer’s voice sounds a little bit like Bjork, while sometimes her voice made me think about Cocorosie and about some moments from my childhood. The reason I am thinking about my childhood is probably because her voice gets pretty child-like sometimes, similar to the voice of one of my close friends from that time, a very soothing sound I might say.

I was and still am fascinated by “The hug“, their last song from “Because Trees Can Fly”. It doesn’t have complex lyrics, but the music just makes you want *THAT* hug from the one you love. You know, those moments when you feel safe, everything is warm around you, etc., etc. and you don’t want to let go of that feeling.

The best song from the latest EP is “Architecture Wounds“, which brings a more mature sound to the band. The male voice is brought up front and has a greater role than it used to have in the previous releases. “Stop Pause Play” seems to be a balance between the two previous albums, combining the mellow sounds from “Because Trees Can Fly” with the rapid rhythm from “Let’s Away”. “Den Støjende Tid” starts with a bass guitar and Rebekka Maria Andersson’s voice in a combination that gave me shivers down my spine and made me curl with auditive pleasure.

As an ending note for my first encounter with this band, I can say that I instantly fell in love with their music and I’ll keep a close eye on them. I am sorry that I skipped a lot of their songs in this article, which might prove even better than those that I presented, but I want you to find out more about them by yourself. The “discovery” will prove very satisfying, trust me.

About “First Encounter”: a category containing articles that are written when I listen to a band for the first time. They are written after listening to a band for a couple of days.