Swedish vocals
International relevance: ***
This album will surely come as a
surprise to those only familiar with Roger Pontare, née Johansson,
as a multiple ESC contestant, in 2000 even securing the seventh place
in the main Eurovision Song Contest with ”Sångerna viskar mitt
namn”. He's well known in Sweden, not only for his powerful voice
but also for his flamboyant dressing style, heavily inspired by his
Sami ancestry. His intents may be sincere, but his over the top vocal
and visual appearance often make it hard for a lot of people to take
him seriously – most of the time, he wastes his talent on
histrionics, but the fact remains that he's a remarkable singer, as
he proved already being the singer of symphonic rock act Nebulosa.
The group's only outing was their
eponymous 1977 album, self-released in an edition of 1,000 copies (reissues with sleeve variations exist).
Despite Johansson/Pontare's vocal potential, ”Nebulosa” relies a
fair bit on the band's instrumental abilities. However, the limited
production values aren't always on par with the their ambitions, for
instance, the synthetic strings do oftentimes sound like a cheap
solution to the denser arrangements I'm sure the band envisioned or
at least would have preferred. While some of Nebulosa's intricate
ideas at times make them sound a bit lost – like a kid dressing up
in his/her parents' clothes – the album's actually pretty well
executed. In fact, the limitations work in their favour, preventing
them from becoming just another overblown symphonic band with a
Genesis complex, determined to spend every single penny of a much too
large budget. It's not an essential album by any stretch, but in the
end, I'd much rather listen to ”Nebulosa” than say, Kaipa's
second and third albums, or Trettioåriga Kriget's stiff intellectual
workouts.
After Nebulosa's break-up in 1979,
keyboard player Thomas Kacso moved back to his native Hungary;
guitarist Thomas Fransén ended up working for electronics company
JVC; drummer Bengt Skarin became a music teacher, and bassist Lennart
Usterud turned to religion and joined the The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or,
if you will, the Mormons).
Full album
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