Swedish alternative rock outfit Molosser are back with a collection of four stripped back singles based off some of the more popular tunes from their debut album. The new set of tunes are more down tuned, laid back, and radically arranged from their original compositions here.
On the first release, ‘Solid Gold’, Molosser bring to life a menacing, ominous, and haunting energy through the faint and dreary acoustic guitar that meanders around the track’s runtime. It’s got a strange brooding bluesy quality scattered across it. The vocals give off the vibe of a tune that’s steeped in folklore, the kind you’d expect to hear on some cinematic sequence of a fantastical expedition for promised treasure through treacherous terrain. The meandering vocal performance, that constantly shifts in tone and range is remarkable in and of itself. When combined with the harmonization and the subtle, purposeful, and emotive guitar work, it makes it all the more powerful.
‘Dive In’ sounds like the soundtrack for a wild west anthem. Here singer Tess’ vocal performance is rapid fire, almost rapping her lines to the backdrop of a stripped back but foreboding acoustic guitar. The riff is undoubtedly the backbone of this record, a pulsating piece of blues rock that contains within it that fire and sparkling edge of a metal record beneath it all. The strange intermesh between folk and metal was the result of a tuning mistake that the duo decided to roll with once they realised what had happened.
Tess and Jahn, the guitarist, are not just partners in music, but life itself. Their music is influenced by this symbiotic relationship as well as by where they have made their home – on a small farm in the Swedish province of Småland, with nature waiting right outside the door. Molosser’s organic and almost free flowing stripped back music, more resplendent than ever on the Barebones Sessions, is the outcome of this.
The darkness continues on ‘Black Oak’, a brooding piece of dark folk music. It’s minimalist, incorporating a sound and moodiness you’d associate from an acoustic piece of 90s Seattle grunge music. Albeit not as grim and desolate as the other tunes, it’s hard to escape that sense of ominous forest folk that Molosser exquisitely craft throughout these raw, organic, and minimal live recordings. ‘Unsolid’ is grim, a song that delves deep into loss and tragedy at a more intimate and crushing attention to detail than the rest. It never sounds bored or sullen however, retaining a liveliness to it while still conveying the dreariness it represents.
A sublime collection of stripped back live recordings that flip the originals on their head through reimagination and recreation. It is folk music turned on its head, dark, fantastical, and dreary.