Gösta Berlings Saga – Forever Now (Pelagic Records) – Now those who have been paying close attention will know this band have been a regular feature on the Organ’s Other Rock Show for years, that and the fact that the last time we bumped into them they were bouncing around like fools at that Cardiacs Sing To Tim gathering, all the way from Sweden to London to sing their hearts out with the rest of the Pond. These Gösta people have form around here, previous you might say. And “Yes!” said a voice from over there in the corner; “oh this is all the things I want” she said. Grab those bits that sound like dirty boys playing 70s TV themes through the whole world window like some kind of ditzy scene gone giant flat screen. Oh this is good, this is fluid, this is very good.
We’ve just been Through The Arches, we had been through those arches already, that was the first track from the album, the first taste that Stockholm’s ever wonderful Gösta Berlings Saga let loose on us all a couple of months ago, that first taste did bode well and right now we’re hearing the massive eight and a bit minutes of Forever Now for the very first time and cor! That is seriously full bodied, this is rich, this is more a widescreen film of epic proportions than a TV theme! They are a rare thing, an instrumental band, in essence a big bold prog rock band, an instrumental band who really don’t need a vocalist to ignite the personality of it all. The five of them have all the majesty right there. This feels vast, like some expanding universe, some weighty tome that just grows and grows – and were only talking about the one track here, the title track, Forever Now, we’re only talking about the the eight and a bit minutes of Forever Now, there’s more to come! It already sounds like enough but there’s a piano to gently ease us into the next piece, a short piece of beauty called The Sprig And The Birch, a piece that feels far more than the just over the minute and a half that it actually is, oh this band are special, this band, as we have said many times, matter.
Fragment II is full of soul, it feels like a mellow Magma jousting with Santana in a beautifully laid back Soul Sacrifice kind of way but then it sounds nothing like that and Gösta Berlings Saga have always had a sound of their own. They’ve always had their own thing happening, they still have, this is very definitely them, yet they’ve found ever more and added it, built on it all and yes there are bits of Yes and great big bits of Cardiacs, and flavours of Focus and Amon Tobin and yes, a bit of This Heat, but they have something all of their own, something that could only be them. it doesn’t feel right the compare this band to anyone else, their whole is their own, something far bigger than the bits that flavour it. Gösta Berlings Saga don’t feel like anyone else.
Gösta Berlings Saga almost feel nostalgic, it is a deeply authentic sound, it is a beautifully real thing. Most of all it feels like those TV themes you loved, those ones made by faceless musicians, that pure joy of TV soundtracks, that freedom that comes when you’re separated from the constrains of the band, when you’re free of the requirements and it is about the pure joy of making tunes – Ooooh, that bit there! That bit in Dog Years, actually the whole of Dog Years (and yes Tim Smith did love them, of all the bits we fed him in later years this is these are the music makers that really grabbed him), oh bloody hell! That bit there! OH! Just wow!
Forever Now, the whole album, not just the title track, doesn’t feel obsessively clever, it is beautifully real, beautifully detailed in a way that feels gloriously simple. Of course it is clever, very clever, it just doesn’t ever need to tell us how clever it is. It is gloriously prog, it is beautifully emotional, it never is technical, it is wonderfully warm, inviting, right, orchestral, so so (so) right. and make of your heart a stone if you don’t love every single second of it. Ceremonial is just that, ceremonial.
And back to the start and it feels so big that opening, that start of a space opera, that Dune vastness of Full Release, that sense of something epic this way comes and then we’re running through the arches again, almost galloping, or flying, yes flying. Could this be their best album yet? Too early to say but it very well could be. This is a really significant album made by a very special band. This is special. (sw)
THE ORGAN 