In my home city, the local museum is currently hosting a 90s exhibition. The NME ‘Battle of Britpop’ cover from precisely 30 years ago is blown up to a hundred times its original size. A Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive are housed in a transparent cage. Hello magazine reveals that Princess Diana is alive and well.
However, while this exhibition prompted hideous reflections on the relentless march of time, the new album Years and Years by Dag och Natt is a gleeful clamber back into a time machine. The band are from Stockholm but only the name (translation: ‘Day and Night’) gives this away. If I’d told you they’re from Oxford and that Years and Years was released in 1992, you would accept my lies as gospel.
Who needs a punchy three-minute opener when you can have a sprawling, six-minute epic with no discernible chorus? Like Ride’s ‘Leave Them All Behind’, ‘See Through’ sounds as though there are twelve guitarists jostling for prominence. The collective effort is a heavenly squall with crystal clear lyrics (are you listening, My Bloody Valentine?) Shut your eyes and pretend you’re in an era when an oasis was still just a desert-based source of water.
First single ‘Iron Man’ is far less frantic – indeed, it implores us to ‘slow down’, and the video is almost ASMR, with its focus on water and ripples and sunlight sparkles. Second single ‘Falling The Same Way’ is just as pleasantly meandering, nudged along by a Stone Roses-like bass line. Third in the trio of singles is ‘Tunis’, which surpasses ‘See Through’ in both duration and scale. Think Sigur Rós meets Interpol in the Royal Albert Hall.
The spidery guitar riff and bass on ‘Setting Sail Again’ are pure Lebanon Hanover, and the vocals – shared on the album by Maja Zetterberg, Elia Mårtensson Almegård and Sara Engström – hint at Wilson Phillips. ‘The Writing Of A Story’ is The Sundays, but slightly more ethereal and not quite as jangly. Similarly, one of the ‘Calling France’ melodies sounds like the pre-chorus on Alanis Morrissette’s ‘Hands Clean’ but sung by Liz Fraser.
‘Olympus’ keeps us on our toes with its shifting time signatures, and is another slab of angular bliss. A short reprise of opening track ‘See Through’ follows and sounds remarkably reminiscent of a snippet of Ride’s ‘Vapour Trail’. ‘Årstaberg’ is a railway station in Stockholm and the final track. Without interviewing the band, one can only speculate on why they chose this as a title. My own theory is that Årstaberg is a liminal space, and as such is an apt metaphor for an album that explores ‘the interplay between light and dark through sound.’ Or maybe the mouth organ that features halfway through the track is a recording of a busker on an Årstaberg platform making an unknowing guest appearance.
Years and Years goes back to the years 1982-1992, starting with shoegaze and ending with dreampop. Whether you’re a floppy-fringed Mancunian, TB-suffering Belgian, or neither of those, you’ll be delighted to discover Dag och Natt.
Years and Years is out on 15th August via Labrador Records
Dag och Natt: Facebook | Instagram
Review by Neil Laurenson
Keep up to date with all new content on Joyzine via our
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Mailing List