Broder Daniel — “Out Of This Town”
Broder Daniel came from nowhere and changed the Swedish indie landscape when they did: poppy and weird tracks that upset the sensibilities of those usually accustomed to Swedish bands like The Cardigans and Eggstone at the time was a lovely thing and a breath of fresh air.
Their first single is “Cadillac”:
Obviously, with a front person like Henrik Berggren, things could have gone any way. It could perhaps mainly have gone south fairly quickly, and the band could have vanished.
Instead, their next single, “Luke Skywalker”, propelled them into faint Swedish indie rock stardom, quickly gathering real fanatics who dressed and made up their faces just like Berggren. The songs were guitar-driven, melodic, and the lyrics melancholic; paired with a world-class live performance drive, the package made Broder Daniel classics on the Swedish music scene.
Two albums followed the first, further propelling the band into a modern-day myth, producing fervent rock songs with a lot of reverb and songs of flight from where one grows up.
The first sign of their fourth album was their appearance on a TV show where they played a song that nobody had heard prior, bar the hardcore fans who had snuck around the band’s rehearsal studio.
That TV episode had 1.4 million viewers, and quickly both hurled the band into the public consciousness as well as into a slump: the band was acutely aware that they had no other new songs to play or even rehearse, and felt they had peaked.
It took roughly three years from the above performance until “Shoreline”was released as a single.
However, even though it had snagged the band a mystical hit track (only available via file-sharing applications), there was another, perhaps more notable song on “Cruel Town”, the band’s fourth and what would prove to be their last album.
“Out Of This Town” was not released as a single, nor is it a song that the band ever played live.
Each day connects to the next
I do my routines by reflex
Life’s an endless row of days
But the heart longs to get awayAnd I wish I could fly out of here
Out of this town
The guitar EBow that starts off the song, the pounding, crashing drums, the thudding bass, all of that reverb, all mixed together in a minor key, makes the accompanying tambourine sound melancholy in nature. Berggren’s voice wobbles a heartfelt and clear voice out at us.
While “Shoreline” dealt with apathy and inertia, “Out Of This Town” speaks out against stagnation that threatens to kill your mind:
Let no routine keep us down
And for once let not tv run our lives
So I one day can say true
I have lived once too
While school tells you how to think and what to know, television does the same, with individuals becoming mere carbon copies of what advertisers want them to be. Meanwhile you’re young, you just want to live, to exist somewhere else, to not be bound by routines but you’re young and don’t have the cash. Nor the life/love. Tested, but not defeated.
And I wish I could fly out of here
Out of this town
I’d follow the wind
leave everything behind
That holds me downI wish I could fly out of here
Out of this town
I’d leave them all behind,
where they are stuck
Waiting for life
(Love)
Berggren’s voice sounds like it is describing and simultaneously fighting off the torpor of which he sings, and his yearning to break free is everywhere; at 03:18 in the song, he sings “Love” at the top of his lungs, sounding as though he has broken free, or possibly out of sheer wishing that things were different.
Does the written lyric mean that Berggren/his singer persona equates life with Love (capital L), or that life is equated with leaving behind the place and the people where one is, and that Love will follow? And perhaps more pressing: what exactly is Love of which he sings?
This is a thrashing kind of song, not unlike some of their other tracks; while Broder Daniel has been criticised for lack of variety in their songs, there’s strength in owning a certain sound, and even in consciously making songs sound alike. And there have been no lack of love for the band, even currently in 2017, when the band has been disbanded for nearly a decade.
While this song seems to be a blip on “Cruel Town” for most people, it has affected me profoundly. I’ve always had a knack for liking underdogs, and when fettered by driftwood in a mentally dead environment, I just cannot resist it, especially enveloped with music like this: simple chords, a bit of harmony and a lot of thunderous reverb. If I were to compare it with something, I’d say it’s taking The Jesus & Mary Chain’s desire for making girl group tracks as though Einstürzende Neubauten were playing them, but running it through a more poetic mill, spicing it up with indie rock sensibilities and a big piece of we mean it.
Trying to get the gist out of this track is really trying too hard, but it deserves to be heard by all, just as Broder Daniel deserves a far larger audience.
