Notes from Pitchform
The great thing about festivals is that there are always discoveries. Entering the grounds this afternoon, I passed by the Enga stage shortly after Superfamily had started. First band of the day, but they played like headliners. They also had the best stage accessory of the day: Two guys in matching suits doing matching dance moves and generally hamming it up. They were the Hives to singer Steven Wilson's Bono, an unapologetic cheeseball who looks like he's having the time of his life on stage. He introduces one song by saying it's about the time he injured his knee when he was a 30-year-old male prostitute in Paris during the 60s, and his own personal Pips unfurl French flags at the song's climax.
Review by Hits From Another Plan
've promised you the biggest, most bombastic band out there today and I don't think that this will disappoint. Superfamily (kicking off my Norwegian Artists Week) are like nothing else out there. A huge seven member band (including three background singers/dancers), they mix styles and sounds from every decade of popular music and fuse it all together with an undeniable energy and spark. Their new album Warszawa is (no joke) one of the best albums I've ever heard. Their first single off of the record, the brilliantly titled The Radio Has Expressed Concerns About What You Did Last Night is, I've read, the most played song on Norwegian radio this year. And, as such, I'm counting on it to be the same sort of breakthrough that It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane was for the Ark. It's a grand, catchy track that only reveals its true brilliance after a few listens. I'm posting the music video below because I want you to see it. But, I'm choosing to post a different track today. Teens Of The 70's is less of a straghtforward pop track but that is in no way a bad thing. Epic in every sense of the word, the song moves through different portions, drawing to mind comparisons from Queen to ELO to Tim Curry to Green Day to The Killers. It's the kind of song that just keeps expanding. Just when you think it can't get any bigger, it does. It's also the kind of song that demands a full stereo system (or at the very least, a nice pair of headphones). It is, quite simply, like no other song I've heard before and is 100% more ambitious than any other band out there right now. Expect a review of the album soon.
Review by Independent Clauses
Norway’s Superfamily have created something potent and undeniably special with their second full-length Warszawa. Cribbing the best from rock acts of years past (and usually improving on them), it’s easy to feel, upon listening to the record, like this is what everything’s been building up to. This is the grand scope The Killers were going for. It’s the perfect concoction of space age hyper drama that Muse just nearly missed last year, and it's what U2 would sound like if they truly were the gods that everyone makes them out to be.
A bizarre concept album about love, loss and time machines, it feels very much like a product of the seventies, even though the synth-heavy music is clearly inspired primarily by the eighties. Despite all of its heady ruminations, though, the album boasts eight huge, instant, singalong pop songs. “I Could Be A Real Winner” and “The Radio Has Expressed Concerns About What You Did Last Night” are already deserved hits in the band’s home country. Each possesses the kind of melody that feels like a lost classic upon the first listen, yet in no way seems derivative or uninventive. The title track, with its majestic, symphonic synth work could just end up being the sweeping, lovelorn throwback of the year. Most instantly impressive, though, is “Teens Of The 70’s”, a wild mash-up of rock opera, stabbing dance and punk attitude, propelled by yelping front man Steven Wilson. If you’re not involved in the record yet, from this point on it’ll sweep you up in its spacey fantasia. Put simply, the track redefines the term “epic.”
Warszawa is, if not the best, at least one of the best things you’re going to hear all year. It’s just in a completely different league than most everything out there right now. It’s the kind of album that redefines things, sets a new standard. Undoubtedly, a staggering achievement, and it goes without saying, a must-own.
Nick James
July/August 2007
Superfamily "Warszawa"
From the impaled sheep heads of black-metal legends Mayhem to the slightly less theatrical antics of the mighty Turbonegro, there's no debating that bands from Norway know how to put on an entertaining live show: Superfamily hail from Moss, just outside of Oslo and are no different from their countrymen in commitment to spectacular live performances. Musically however, they offer something entirely different. Superfamily's lead vocals are man-handled by Steven Wilson, Kim Granholt is on keyboards; Martin Steffensen does guitar & backing vocals, Tommy Christensen - drums, Hasse Rosbach - bass, Anders Nielsen - backing vocals & dancing, Terje Krumins - backing vocals & dancing and Håkon Moe - backing vocals & dancing. Propeller Recordings signed them up in the men’s bathroom at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo, one cold winter day in February 2004. The same year they delivered the 4 track 'Champagne EP'. The lead song 'Back in Style' recalled prime time Rocket to the Crypt, 'Sulfur Heart' mirrored the slacker-rock of Dinosaur Jnr; 'Ugly Bugly' comes on like the organ heavy psychedelia of 13th Floor Elevators, whereas 'Shitfuck' must be one of the most radio un-friendly songs ever recorded. The band's debut album, 2005's 'Back in Paris', was no less ambitious. Tracks like 'I Don't Remember a Thing' come with heavy acid rock riffs straight from a 'Nuggets' compilation, whilst elsewhere on 'Windows' and 'Taxi Dancing', there are traces of Echo & the Bunnymen and The Cure, which point to the direction of new album 'Warszawa'. 'Warszawa' is also a David Bowie title, from which Joy Division's original incarnation Warsaw took their name. The icy cold synths of opening track 'In the Night' hint at Bowie's 'Low' or JD's 'Closer', yet the chorus is worthy of the rather less cool bands Simple Minds or Ultravox. Whilst instant credibility and perhaps common sense would dictate that we focus on the innovative production rather than the poppier elements throughout 'Warszawa', there's still no denying that 'I Could Be a Winner' sounds like it belongs on the closing credits of an 80s John Hughes movie, where the popular guy dumps the beauty queen for the screwed-up girl who he then takes to the prom. First single 'The Radio Has Expressed Concerns About What You Did Last Night', uses atmospheric piano, synth and rock thunder, recalling Brian Eno's rockier solo works or proto-nu-romantics Japan, but is still defiantly original somehow. It's a genuine anthem in Norway right now and if there's any justice left in this cruel world, it will soon be everywhere.