Thunderbird Motel

This is not a thank-you note
This is just a few words that I wrote.
They were never meant for you to hear
It's just that they kept ringing in my ear.

Now you can read me like an open book
Read about the beatings that I took
About happiness all shot to hell
A weekend at the Thunderbird Motel.

At the Thunderbird Motel.

Well, the bitter moon is hanging low
Neil Diamond pours his heart out on the radio
And nothing seems to go my way
Sad, sad songs and cheap Chardonnay.

Three days in the wilderness
Was all it took to make my life a mess
My happiness all shot to hell
A weekend at the Thunderbird motel.

At the Thunderbird Motel.


This is hardly a cheerful song but may be a tonic for those revising for exams because things will get better soon - believe me. It is also, perhaps, not a well known one. The band is Oh Laura, the singer Frida Öhrn and the album A Song Inside My Head, a Demon In My Bed. The UK release was 2008, on Cosmos Records, but it was released in some parts of northern Europe in 2007.

It is not as if Scandinavia - Oh Laura is a five-piece band from Sweden - is ever remotely short of good new music and 2008 is looking particularly interesting on this front but this is rather different to much that we have become accustomed to in the last few years.

It is not all gloom, perhaps in Scandinavian pop it never is, but on this one even the ostensibly optimistic 'Out Of Bounds' still has worrisome shadows.
It is consistently good and certainly one of the best albums I have bought in 2008.