Surrounded

Two albums in nearly ten years is a pretty minimal return. But when those two albums are ‘Safety In Numbers’ and ‘The Nautilus Years’ it is easy to forgive Swede space-rockers Surrounded. Their debut ‘Safety In Numbers’ (released by emo-rock stalwarts Deep Elm) did enough to impress One Little Indian who snapped them up for the long awaited follow up. Mårten Rydell (vocals, guitar) and Marcus Knutson (guitar) formed the band all the way back at the start of the new century in.

The rest of the band is made up of Tom Malmros (bass), Johannes Linder (drums) and Erik Gustafson (keys). Having gone through a couple of changes in the line-up, Mårten feels “right now I feel we have the strongest and most confident setup of people working together so far.” The four year wait for ‘The Nautilus Years’ was well worth it. The second album blues or the sophomore jinx seems to trip a lot of bands up. Not so Surrounded who with this newest offering have taken everything that made their first album great and made them better. Basically if you liked ‘Safety In Numbers’ you will like ‘The Nautilus Years’ even more.

Their sumptuous wall of sound is as emotionally dense as it is sonically so. The band deal in the same wistful magic as Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips, two bands with whom they are often compared. Songs build to tumultuous climaxes or uplifting pinnacles. Even when the band explore a more down to earth (alt-)countryish terrain a phantasmagorical flight of fancy or an eager soaring melody is never far away. Guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, and Mårten’s strange otherworldly croon as well as other assorted accoutrements all meld together into one beautiful whole.

The reason for the delay was twofold, a disagreement with their label held the album release up for a year but the band also like to take their time perfecting their magical cosmic sonic stew. “In general we like to work over longer periods of time with the songs to really get a perspective on them, if they pass the long term test. Recording an album over two weeks of time may be a risky business regarding the "kill-your-darlings" thing,” explains Mårten.

“We start to build from the smallest of components, my voice and a guitar, electric or acoustic, then drums and bass for a couple of weekends. It often happens we have to throw away some details at this stage of the process in order to make the songs breathe and expand in the right direction.”

It is also a more accessible and less abstract record than its predecessor, Mårten admits, “looking upon the music I feel we have become more oriented towards a combination of tunes that could appeal to a wider spectrum of listeners.” With the mainstream press already starting to pay attention it’d be nice to think that 2008 could be the year of the Nautilus and of Surrounded.