SOV GOTT ROSE-MARIE

There are records, often more or less concept records which are perfect as a unite and there are records like this, International Harvester's Sov gott Rose-Marie which is incoherent and sprawling. Some moments they shone how cool this music could be, with a very groovy minimalistic rock music. I have actually hard to find band that are som heavy as International Harvester. Important to know is that this band is the same band as Pärson Sound, Harvester and Träs, gräs och stenar. On the time of this release they had changed name from Pärson Sound and were made up by Bo Anders Persson (guitar, vocals), Thomas Tidholm (saxophone, flute, vocals), Urban Yman (violin), Arne Eriksson (cello), Torbjörn Abelli (bass) and Thomas Mera Gartz (drums, vocals).

I could have rated this record "good but not essential" if it wasn't for some sound crap I have heard here. "I villande skogen" is thank lord very short but meaningless mumbles. "Klockan är mycket nu" is annoying and repeating and the almost twelve minutes long "How to survive" is awful and very boring, monotinic and not cool at all. "The runcorn report on western progress" is also slow and very bad.

The better sides of International Harvester is the opener: "Dies Irae" with saxophone screaming chruch notes very powerfully and it ends up in birds singing. "There is no other place" is a cool rock song, typical for this band's better moments. "Ho Chi Minh" is a bunch of strong slogans in support of Vietnam's fight against USA, also powerful rock. "Ut till vänster" is very short but has a nice flute melody. "Stadsministern" is great if you speak Swedish. They sang: "The Prime minister can read, The Prime Minister can write, The Prime Minister can count, but he can't dance rocka bogga rocka bogga dong dong dong". "Sommarlåten" is a god song that also shows the best side of this band with a strong melody and skillful musicians. "Sov gott Rose-Marie" is a nice hypnotic lulluby. The long tracks: "I mourn you" and especially the bonus track "Skördetider" is perhaps the most important tracks if you want to hear how they sounded. They are very minimalistic but also good. "Skördetider" is very long, 25 minutes, dark och powerful but not very exciting. It depends on if you are interested in minimalistic music. I am not very found of that but enjoy some parts of this music. But this is not really my favourite form of prog and some parts are som bad and meaningless they destroy the record as a whole. I recommend this record to somebody, absolutely not everybody.