Kåre João — Sideman

I really want to know what they put in the Norwegian water. There is so much good music coming from this country that I'm thinking of buying a ticket and never come back. Take for instance Kåre João, with his new release "Sideman".

Kåre is known from the Norwegian band Kåre & the Cavemen / Euroboys, who released a couple of albums and became quite succesfull with it. In the spring of 2000 the band came to a grinding hault. And after meeting up with Jester Records label owner Chris Rygg, Kåre made a deal to release his first solo album on Chris' label. The result is "Sideman", an exploration into progressive, psychedelic rock. Kåre has written, produced and arranged all the music on the album, and plays a lot of instruments.

The albums opens with first single "Captain Trips", which is a bluesy, poppy, psychedelic rock track. This song certainly has the potential to become an underground hit. The guitar riffs remind me of Black Sabbath, but the song sounds a lot happier. "Captain Trips" ends with droning sound experiments, which happens on a lot of tracks on "Sideman".

"Channel Five" starts slowly with a nice slide guitar, but evolves into a wall of sound, with background singers, piano and horns. This song has a great atmosphere and how it evolves into this thick soundwall is just amazing. "Frank Furius" could be another single, great vocals and it's really catchy. At times it reminds me of Blur, and do I hear Chris Rygg singing in the background?

So all in all I think Kåre wrote a great solo album. I sure need to check out his former bands, if it's as good as this. Now we sometimes get complaints we only review good albums at Musique Machine, but isn't it better to know what's good? It makes reviewing albums a much nicer job and we don't get mad fans sending us hatemail... So, there you go, another album with 4 kudos, go get it now.