© 2024 NPR Illinois
The Capital's Community & News Service
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Two ways to support NPR Illinois during the second annual Public Media Giving Days:
1. Share on your social media channels why you love NPR Illinois.
2. Support NPR Illinois with a donation.

Songs We Love: The Amazing, 'Safe Island'

The Amazing.
Courtesy of the artist
The Amazing.

It's easy to use hyperbolic adjectives when describing songs like "Safe Island." The Amazing crafts a sound that's huge, sprawling, immense and so on, but words aren't worth much when you're confronted with a song this enveloping. Picture You, the Swedish band's third album, touches on the psych-rock guitarist Reine Fiske previously made with Dungen, but The Amazing ventures further, dipping its toes into shoegaze and psychedelia without drowning in era-specific signifiers.

In "Safe Island," Christoffer Gunrup's voice is so bathed in effects that it's nearly impossible to decipher what he's singing about. Instead, you're left with a shapeless quality that's both beautiful and immensely sad, all before the song dissolves into a feedback-driven coda.

Copyright 2015 KUTX 98.9