The New Division - Shadows

It's strange when you listen to a release in the end of 2011 and can tell it's going to be one of the best releases of 2012. American The New Division with their album 'Shadows' is going to be one of my favorites from the upcoming year, I can tell. With the last few releases like Kite and Henric de la Cour from Progress Productions, this is yet one superb signing and release. Very impressive.

With a name that is a combination between Joy Division and New Order, you have the inspiration pretty straighten out from the start. This is not electropop nor synthpop, this is electronic pop all the way through and something that is quite unusual in comparison with the rest of Progress Productions artists, even though the two priory mentioned ones are similar in a way.

There are so many settings where this album could be the soundtrack. It's a party, it's hanging with your friends in the up lit city during a Friday evening, it's you home alone thinking about your accomplishments or your failures. It's whiskey as much as it is bright colored party drinks. It has both got me smiling as well as thinking. You set the mood and The New Division will magically fit perfect to it, like a dynamic soundtrack of life.

The sound is far from direct and straight forward. It got a travelling sense to it with many different layers and is moving in ways you perhaps would not expect in a pop album. It feels perfected. Like each and every track has been listened to over and over and over and adding tiny sounds here and there to maximize the listener's experience, but far from making it gritty. The drums, synths and guitars works perfectly together in harmony only Dalai Lama could dream of.

An album with 14 tracks is quite brave, but the fact is that nothing should be removed or replace. Even though it took me a few listenings, I now can see how it all fits together as a well-oiled machinery. I tried to namedrop a few tracks, but I can't, I have new favorites each day. It's all so close to perfection.

If Fredrik Strage is not mentioning this album in Nyhetsmorgon on TV4 (Swedish TV) in the end of January 2012, anyone of you can send me your hat and I'll eat all of them, without salsa sauce. Jan 16 2012