Dungen

Sweden’s Dungen often get called “psychedelic rock,” which might bring to mind a sound that sits somewhere between Jimi Hendrix lighting his Stratocaster on fire and Blue Cheer smoking out their tour van.  And it’s true that the group—lead by multi-instrumentalist/ mad scientist Gustav Ejstes—is more than happy to make with the thick, fluid drumming and the heavy, brain-melting guitar solos.But as folks on this side of the Atlantic learned after the 2004 release of Ta De Lungt, there's more to Dungen’s psychedelica than just kissing the sky from atop a stack of Marshalls.

One minute, they’re making like shaggy guitar gods, with Reine Fiske trying to achieve rock transubstantiation one arcing note at a time.  The next, they’re accurately aping the pastoral pop of songwriters like Ray Davies and Paul McCartney, complete with trumpet fanfares, lilting flute, and Ejstes’ sweetly pitched vocals. Then they could stumble upon the sort of slinky jazz-fueled groove that noted producer David Axelrod made his own, or get jammy like a pocket-sized Grateful Dead doing laps on top of a Can LP, or offer a blissed-out folk homily that fell out of Sandy Denny’s songbook.

The band’s 2008 album, 4, (their fifth LP, of course and perhaps a not-so-sly nod to the Led Zeppelin album) covers all this ground and more in 38 tidy minutes.  Some might blanche at Ejstes singing his lyrics in his native tongue, but when the music’s this expressive, words only matter so much, anyway. —David Raposa