It's been 15 years since I first laid ears on Sweden's Dee Rangers via their mighty "Pretty Ugly Beat" album, so smear me with a bowl of IKEA meatballs and mashed potato for thinking they'd broken up. Au contraire, to mix European languages in an almost Brexit world, they are very muich alive and kicking.
"All You Need Tonight" is album number seven for a band whose membership has stayed largely stable since they formed in the mid-'90s. You'll recognise their influences as soon as you hear their music. Firmly rooted in the '60s but blurring the stylistic boundaries between pop and garage, it's a potent distillation of what made Scandi music great for a very long time.
If Dee Rangers were Australian in the 1980s and '90s, they'd be touring mates with the Stems, the Huxton Creepers and Voodoo Lust and recording for Citadel or Voxx.
There's lots to like about "All You Need Tonight" - starting with lead single "I'm Your Fool". Per Nystrom's confident vocal massages the lively melody before a fractured guitar break rubs on some sonic dirt. It's tough and hooky power-pop and a gem.
You like to mix it up? There's the Hollies-like Brit-folk pop of "I Want A Girl Like You" and the Sonics-meet-The-Fleshtones instro' hip-shaker "Powerslam VI". Tremolo collides with fuzz and a walking bass-line on "Kisses Like Wine" and the outcome's raucously sweet.
"Older Guys" is perky beat-pop and "Patchouli" is more rocking than its hippie and beads title lets on. Nicke Ohman's muscular guitar makes sure of that.
Dee Rangers don't do anything you haven't heard before but they do it so well that you'll wonder why we're not hearing sounds like theirs, the still great Nomads and The Dahlmanns pouring out of radio speakers all over the world.
Procure it on LP or as a download.
