Pros: A delightful mix of the best in pop music from the last forty years
Cons: The group is virtually unknown and the album is hard to find
The Bottom Line: With their album Bubblegum, the Merrymakers continue to show that Sweden is one of the best best sources out there for pop music. Pop aficionados need to get a copy.
DrFaustus's Full Review: Bubblegun by The Merrymakers
Say the word "bubblegum" and a specific idea probably comes to mind. For most people, it's probably that chewy, sticky, pink stuff that unscrupulous high school students stick under the desk. For music lovers, though, the word "bubblegum" probably conjures up reminders of the sweet, innocent music that dominated the AM airwaves in the late sixties and early seventies. This music was pretty lightweight when compared to its older sibling, rock 'n roll, but the songs were undeniably full of infectious hooks. Bands like The Monkees, the Archies, Edison Lighthouse, and even the Partridge Family took their influences from music like the early albums of the Beatles and found their fame before the bubblegum music craze died out in the mid-seventies.
More than twenty years later, the Swedish pop group The Merrymakers released an album entitled Bubblegum, an album that doesn't attempt to copy the music that shares its name, but rather blends that music with the guitar pop of the late nineties to create a sound both retro and modern.
The Merrymakers were formed in the early nineties by Swedish musicians Anders Hellgren and David Myhr. Their guitar fueled power pop won them a fair amount of attention over in Europe, but they never garnered much attention here in the States. A few prominent figures in the music business heard the music, though, and realized the potential that the Merrymakers had. One of these individuals was Andy Sturmer, front man of the power popsters Jellyfish. Sturmer liked the early work of the Merrymakers so much that he arranged to collaborate on songwriting duties and production with Hellgren and Myhr. Months later in 1997, the Merrymaker's finished their first U.S. release, Bubblegum.
The album's fist track, Saltwater Drinks, opens with an unaccompanied tenor voice intoning:
I would like to go away
See the world in just one day
How I wish that we could be
Sailing in a boat for two
Cross the seven seas with you
Saltwater drinks are all on me
The lyrics are pretty saccharine and sweet like most bubblegum pop music, but in the middle of this a capella intro the guitars and drums come barging in, making this one so much more than just a sappy piece of bubblegum. The resulting mix is something akin to a fast song from Fountains of Wayne tinged with a slight foreign accent for flavor.
The album continues with Troubled Times, another song with sugary lyrics about being falling in love and being there to support one another. The song opens with a simple acoustic guitar riff under the lyrics, sound an awful lot like REM from the late eighties. By the time the chorus rolls around, the electric guitars and drums join the mix, leading the song back to the power pop energy set forth by the first song.
On Under the Light of the Moon, the album's tempo drops a little, but the energy and craftsmanship remains top-notch. Here, the electric guitars take a backseat to the acoustic, giving this song a much more organic feel. Lyrically, this is one of those songs that celebrates the lazy, relaxed joys of life.
The next two songs, Monkey in the Middle and Superstar, work together in a curious contrast. Both songs explore themes of fleeting fame and being forgotten and rejected by the world, but the two songs could not sound more dissimilar. Monkey in the Middle is a slow, relaxed song, almost to the point of sounding like lounge music (but in a good way). Included in the song are a few moments that sound like they could have been lifted directly from the best moments of Paul McCartney's music in the seventies. Superstar, on the other hand, borders on the "loud, fast, and out of control" style of music. Musically it sounds similar to the theme from Friends except that it has much more clever lyrics and doesn't have the silly hand clapping.
Which brings us next to April's Fool, clearly the stand-out track on the album and the one that first got me interested in The Merrymakers. In many ways, this song feels like a lost Beatles song from '67 or '68. The song opens with a laid-back honky tonk piano riff like something Billy Preston might have played. By the time the guitars join in, we get some rhythm and solo work that sound exactly as if they were played by George Harrison. The lyrics have that same cheeky sense of humor that Paul McCartney managed to perfect in the years before the Beatles broke up. Have a look at the chorus:
She packed in January
She left in February
It took 'til March to realize
That I'd been April's fool
Today's pop music writers would do well to take note here and try to figure out just what makes lyrical construction like this work so well. In a perfect world, April's Fool would have been one of the biggest songs of the late nineties.
Hellgren and Myhr continue to wear their influences on their sleeves with A Fine Line. This song is driven by a strong, steady bass line reminiscent of early eighties new wave bands like Squeeze. The only complain with this one is that at just over two minutes, it's over just when you're really starting to get into it,
As the album progressed, we move through I'm in… Love, Sad, and Ms. Demeanour. This trio of songs continues to show the group's mastery over the conventions of power pop. Strong rhythms and thick power chords abound throughout these songs. Try as you may, it's impossible not to catch the infectious energy put forth in these songs.
Bubblegum closes with a final trio of songs, Adore, Coming Home, and Outside Looking In. People who have listened to way too much music, like myself, eventually start to recognize the typical structure of a well-planned album. At the end, tradition dictates that we need some strong closer to bring the album to a sense of finality. Each of these three songs serves this purpose well. The tempo is a little slower. There is a feel of seriousness in the singing. The lyrics focus on remembrance of the past and looking forward to the future. In short, any of these three songs would make a good closer for a standard pop album or concert. The only thing that feels a bit awkward is that we have three such songs at the end of Bubblegum, and as a result, we keep expecting the album to end after each one. It feels a bit odd, but not so much so that it detracts from the album.
The Merrymakers are certainly not trying to redefine pop music here. In fact, they do nothing at all to hide their influences. Throughout the album you can hear the touch of previous pop acts such as The Hollies, Queen, Abba, The Zombies The Beatles, Paul McCartney, Squeeze, XTC, Elvis Costello, and dozens of others. They're not trying to be original and groundbreaking in any way. What they are doing, though, (and doing quite well), is picking out the best moments of pop music from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and combining them into strong, cohesive whole. We get the best of British invasion, the best of new wave, the best of power pop, and yes, even the best of bubblegum music all rolled into one.
If you're looking for something truly new and groundbreaking, you won't find it on Bubblegum. But if you're a big fan of pop music, and want to hear some of it's best moments rolled into one album, rush out and get this disk. Maybe if enough of us start to buy Bubblegum, we'll soon get another album from this vastly underappreciated group. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
(Oh, and as a last note, the U.S. release of Bubblegum comes bundled with a five song bonus disk of tunes from the group's first album, No Sleep 'til Famous, an album that has still never been released here in the U.S. I won’t go into much detail on these songs, as I hope to get my hands on a copy of No Sleep 'til Famous so that I can write a full review. I'll simply say that these five songs, particularly Monument of Me, are amongst the best pop/rock songs I've heard in quite some time. The bonus disk makes an already great album even better.)
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