Melby Looks Like A Map White Vinyl Edition

On a first, careless, listen, Stockholm four-piece Melby might seem like a charming, fun little jangle-pop band. Pay a little more attention however, and you’ll find their waters run a lot deeper than that. The band have all the flash and sparkle of your favourite indie band, but add an ability to touch moods and feelings with a meaning beyond most of their peers. Their guitars, drums and synths rattle, roll and flicker around each other, all held together by the soul-shiver in Wiezell’s vocals, to make immaculate little guitar-pop gems, equally dusted with sadness and sugar.

Finding comfort in a sea of uncertainty might be a good way to describe Looks Like A Map, the bands second album. The record captures Melby at a moment where they’re growing as people and as a band, expanding the reach of their sonic horizons, and taking in deeper and heavier themes, trying to find a home in an often-alienating world. The music they made around that has a little touch of sorcery around it, sometimes soft as smoke, sometimes woozy and dream-blurred, sometimes crashing and explosive. But even through all that evolution, the heart and the soul have remained the same, and Looks Like A Map still has that Melby-feeling, of a band who put all of themselves into everything they make and their own blend of indie, psych, pop, rock and folk. It’s a new high for the band that have toured Scandinavia, Germany and the UK and have played festivals such as Eurosonic, Reeperbahn and By:Larm, and one that hints at even bigger things to come.