Mando Diao
Ode To Ochrasy
Mute
“Ochrasy” is defined by Mando Diao as, “the wee hours of the night, after the show, post after-party, before the start of the next day.” We’ve all experienced those moments of surreality at about 4 a.m. when your buzz is wearing off, but the high of sleep deprivation is making the colors of life look more vivid. The world is a hallucination for those of us awake while everyone else sleeps. It’s in those hours where anything can happen, inhibitions are gone, and bad decisions become new experiences. Bands on the road live most of their lives in this state of Ochrasy, and these Swedish garage rockers have dedicated an entire album to it.
The resulting 14 songs, the band’s third full-length, are the celebratory after-effects of these unreal moments. You can smell the stale beer and cheap cigarettes. You can see sweaty bodies slapping together and hear the car wheels passing on dew slick roads. The night is the morning, but is still the night, and the most important question is: Should I have another drink or get some breakfast?
“We’re having fun in the day time/ we’ll chase the stars in the night time/ we’ll catch the sun in the morning/ We just don’t care if they see us fall/ we just don’t care at all” –from “The Wildfire (If It Was True)”
Sweden has brought us The Hives and The Sounds in recent years, and now Mando Diao joins the elite club of pretty people who make good music. It’s more aggressive than Oasis ever dared to be –the estranged cousin of The Strokes who lives in the UK and listens to more Iggy Pop than Velvet Underground. Much like underrated Wales band, People In Planes, Mando Diao will most likely slip under the radar dodging mainstream popularity in exchange for a well deserved cult following. I’ll be the first to serve as a cult member.
Mando Diao: http://www.mando-diao.com
